#i am in that actually. but no. my topic now is... hold on. hmmm.

[sapphyreopal5]

I think would be a great idea for you to make a video talking about Gen and Danneel doing black magic. I think people would be interested in your conversation with the psychic guy by your guys messaging each other. After I did read of screenshots from your last post. I am hooked and hungry for want know more information about it, plus I want your opinion about Gen too.

By the way, did the psychic guy message you again? Because I am dying to know what he said more about Danneel and Jensen.

Hello Anon, thank you for the ask. So he and I have been talking some. Some of the same stuff has been said by him multiple but also by me in different words in multiple posts. For a point of reference, this is the first of these screenshots I posted regarding Danneel and Gen's black magic. I have a few more messages I will share below as well. He and I did talk about Hilarie Burton. I know quite a few anti Danneel folks here don't like Hilarie as well, some have said she comes across as fake and such. Interesting fact about Hilarie, she is actually not an incarnated demon like Danneel is but is instead an incarnated dark Faye. Hmmm, does Danneel in fact have a brunette lover or did she just hang out with a brunette? Some people might think she is in fact talking about Steve, which a lot of fellow anti Danneel bloggers here would know about ha ha. The psychic guy did tell a little more about Danneel's said illnesses and a couple more things.

I just might make a video Anon if there's enough demand for it since it takes time to do research, put together screenshots like this, make the video, edit as needed, etc.

As for my opinion on Gen, now that is something I didn't really elaborate on but it can be implied by more recent posts of mine, I don't exactly hold her on a pedestal. Before I elaborate on my opinions of Gen, I wanted to take a chance to address something I recently saw. Namely, a post someone sent me where it seems an Anon was talking about my Hooters post and where the answer talked about how normal that is going to places like that and how this is crucifying him or perhaps holding him to impossible standards. Now come on, I am no Jared hater and in fact overall like him a lot. No one escapes my observations for better or for worse, Jared and Gen included. I do however just about always defend my friends and family, even if I end up telling them they are wrong in private. I never embarrass my friends or family on purpose and wouldn't do this my partner if I had one unlike Gen ha ha.

Because of the fact I am a personality theories nerd, if anyone is familiar with the MBTI I'm big time ENTP. Of course, labels don't describe everything and we are more than just certain things but I am mentioning this because I question EVERYTHING and EVERYONE, it's what I do. Some people just need to get over this.... anyways onto the real topic, just wanted to share that fun fact about myself and a tidbit of my general personality with you all.

I decided to take this opportunity to share screenshots from a Reddit thread on others' opinions on men who frequently go to places like Hooters, Tilted Kilt, Coyote Ugly, and then the other ones mentioned in the screenshots below. I will say especially this comment in my opinion, 'cause it is extremely relevant for why I question this whole Hooters frequenting of Jared's in my book (and notably without Gen being there for the more recent times in recent years): "Depends on context. Once in a while for a birthday party or guy’s night is fine. Routinely/regularly on his own? That’s weird." I like people getting multiple perspectives thrown into one, 'cause I can. That's just how I roll, kids! But hey, if you want to see some other sites that talk about this, you can also check out this Quora question, this Askmen thread (where of course a lot of the guys who answered said it's merely a woman being insecure), another Reddit thread where her husband keeps lying about going to places like this, this girlsaskguys thread, you guys get the idea at this point, don't cha?!

And I am pretty sure this is exactly what all these "crazy, insecure women" are thinking these Hooters waitresses and such are thinking, summarized in a catchy song "Don't Cha" by the Pussycat Dolls. 🎶I'd probably be just as crazy about you if you were my own man🎶

Nah but man for real, I found it funny how the same day Coyote Ugly photos came out, Gen's hair stylist or something posted this. Was this to validate herself or just her position in her cushy lifestyle. Oops, I meant as Jared's loving wife and mother of 3 children... or did I? Here I answered someone earlier today about Jared going from wanting to retire to being a producer and then ended up being both the lead character and the Executive Producer on his Show "Walker". I provided plenty of direct quotes to show what is being officially said about why he changed his mind on staying in acting. Note that I said officially there being the keyword in the last sentence. My real opinion? I think that Jared started to realize that because he spent so much time away from home that he in a way feels like an outsider, an issue that might've been exasperated by the COVID lockdowns. I can't for the life of me find where that interview was originally from, so if someone wants to chime in I'll gladly give credit :D

Now I'm going to bring up a couple of quotes directly from this video that was from their Walker Interview on "The Talk" from April 2021 after the midseason finale of Walker. Again coming straight out of Jared and Gen's mouths.

9:48 What has it been like to to get to work together and live together again? Jared: "Uhh it's been pretty magical I think I think I'll kind of echo something that Gen said earlier which is it's really nice you know. I think as it happens often times mothers will umm put their passions and their talents aside uh when having kids. And annoying so below, 10:12 Um more often than not it's because the fathers are useless. I know I can say that as far as I go, and so she kind of stepped aside from acting for about nine years to make sure that our kids didn't perish so thank god but now seeing her work again in her elements. You know she had gone to school and acted she had her own TV show and then we had met on the TV, she had done movies and this and that and so to be able to show her off you know during COVID times. Con't. 10:55 During COVID times my kids can't come to set because we're all tested regularly. You have to be part of a certain uh grouping tha tyou can only talk with people that you work with, we're all wearing masks and we're all distancesd and so I can't bring friends or family or my kids to set but I can have my wife there because she's on show as well. 11:03 to 11:12: It's date day. So there have been I'll admit there have been a few times where we've been on set and it'll be like 5pm and we're both wrapped. We're like well if we wait a couple hours then the kids will be asleep by the time we get home. Gen starts laughing and says (I think) don't admit that. 11:16 to 11:26: They won't see it, they won't know until a couple more years. (Gen briefly says "catch dinner") Yeah we're gonna be like pretending, let's pretend we're still filming. Uh, let's tell the babysitter we're still filming and let's go get some sushi or something" 11:36 onward And of course, Gen takes a moment to talk about her pet project TOWWN here. Is this about the show Walker or is this about the Jared and Gen show?

Well Jared she certainly made her stance clear in this interview with Dave Hollis (partial transcript included in my post here) how she really felt about you coming home to live with her. Just saying...

"This is the first time I lived with my husband. I know that sounds really crazy but my husband had been filming a TV show for 15 years in Vancouver so when all of this started you know he came down here. He had 2 episodes left and then that was the completion of the series. Personally, it meant that I had to live with him and deal with coparenting which was really stressful like the thought of it. And to make that work, and it was crazy because we were always in this tight bubble with just us and our kids and it really was simplifying. It was you know like the layers are gone. The interference is gone, drama is kinda out the window in a way, and we got to really simplify basic needs. It's so weird how much unlayering we had to do and that's what I'm finding through all of this is a lot of unlayering to get to the core". "I was just talking to someone about this that my favorite relationship with him is a work relationship. Sometimes it's hard to be married to him because he's like, Jared is so interesting because he's so analytical. I mean my husband, I'm going to toot his horn because he's literally one of the smartest human beings I've ever met in my life and it's annoying because he will correct you on words you think he didn't even know. I have a book of SAT words just because I'm like I am going to get him. And so I'll just casually talk about something and use a crazy word in a sentence and he'll be like well you pronounced it incorrectly. It's so frustrating. Also in our marriage he's very giving and emotional and supportive. He's supportive in everything that I've done and I feel really lucky and grateful. I think even more so when it comes to work he is your biggest cheerleader and it's going to be a lot of time together. But funny enough, I think we'll be better at work than sometimes we are at home. Because I'm like, this is how the kids are, this is how I like them, this is the order that I like things in. And it's hard for me to let go I think, at home. but at work, it's just a really nice exchange and I feel really lucky, and he'll sit there too. If he's not working, he'll take it, pull up a chair and talk on the phone and watch at me and I can hear him bragging about me and whether he's doing it for my benefit I don't know but it makes me feel good and I feel really lucky that he does stuff like that."

Cute how they bring the kids to the set of Walker at times like they did in the promos last week, ain't it? However, being the questioner I am I wondered after a friend brought up a great point: "why didn't she and Jared celebrate watching the Total Solar Eclipse together on April 8, 2024, which was yesterday?" Not like COVID is preventing Gen from bringing the kids on the set CLEARLY. AND why was she NOT taking this amazing chance to advertise the cool Walker Eclipse glasses (therefore advertising HER and HER HUSBAND'S show) but instead chose to advertise yet another company in her IG story? Another affiliate partnership that's probably gonna rake in less dollars than you know, her husband's show (I meant the "family project")? Dunno you all decide...

I mean also funny how in the post below she was seen wearing one of these "less cool" types of Eclipse glasses during the 2017 Solar eclipse, which I'm saying 'cause they're not as snazzy or sunglasses like. So, not buying the whole "it's because it's more fashionable" type of logic or "she can do whatever she wants". Sure she can but she's in the public eye so her actions and such are free game to criticism. Bite me!

Point is, Gen is just a walking advertisement. She is fake, she's clearly all about her cushy lifestyle she didn't truly earn (looking at you, black magic!), and frankly I'm pleased that she's got a long ass sentence in "hell" ahead of her (which is funnily enough way longer than Danneel's actually). Also, is it just me or is there something weird about this page excerpt she selected from the book and then comparing it to the attire she chose for the Mom2Summit event this weekend in Nashville, TN? As if the following book excerpt isn't somehow telling about how she REALLY feels without actually saying how she feels...

Notice the color of her pants in that post Charlie made has her in turquoise pants. And then go read the above. It starts with: "When we're married, I want us to work together. We'll be a team, and I won't leave you out of matters the way my dad did my mom. She wishes Harv hadn't told her all of this. If he was only using her to prop up his family name, it would be easier to leave him. But he wants a true partnership, one where he would welcome her opinions and thoughts." Another part says towards the end of the page "She pictures Ko Lipe from her poster, the inviting turquoise waves. Her dress flutters around her legs as she heaves one leg over the railing, then the other. On her tiptoes, she surveys the water below her. It's no Thai island but it'll do. She jumps." Also note where she underlined: "Too many expectations. Too many people in her ear saying they're not asking for too much. She gives and gives but still it's not enough."

Not sure how much she's giving here because she's been handed everything on a silver platter and fed by a silver spoon her entire life but what do I know? Turns out she even walked away during this summit towards the end to "take a phone call". From who, your husband who once said was ignoring you in a video and said "come on pick up" in? Feeling a bit petty right now XD

My bottomline view of Gen is, she tries to portray herself as this homestead type of crunchy Earth hippy mom but then when you look at her closely enough she is a much bigger liar than Danneel is and is much more fake. She is not this great, super supportive wife that Jared for some dumb ass reason keeps trying to make her out to be. For example, I find it funny how just last week she was all about promoting Walker, even including filming Jared with Odette and Shep. Cute right? Until I realized that they didn't even share the moment of the Total Eclipse yesterday, let alone Gen advertised yet another affiliate product instead of her own husband's show. I honestly don't believe the whole oh we can't bring the kids on set rule during COVID. If y'all are the bosses (oh sorry, there's really only 1 and that's Jared NOT Gen) you can make exceptions. What is the CDC gonna do, arrest you for bringing your kids to work? They could've made them stay stuck to their iPads or something, not that hard to social distance unless they're unruly. But then again being the wittle rebel I can be at times, I just think outside the box a lot. Heck, I brought my kid to work with me to my job during COVID and when he did them online schooling sessions and all that on iPad, ain't it so nice being able to work for family? ♥

#divination #psychic #anti genevieve #anti influencers #anti jarevieve #pada marriage is a mess #psychic messages #black magic

[ghooostbaby]

Rules: tag 9 people you'd like to get to know better!

ooh thank you for tagging me @baiwu-jinji :) :) that edge of the sea book sounds really interesting!

Last song: I put on a playlist of Grouper songs because it started raining hard and I needed something soft & dark to go with the ambience haha. apparently the song being played right now is called “She Loves Me That Way”

Currently Watching: Till the End of the Moon officially but it’s so emotionally intense I take frequent breaks with other things, today I was rewatching No Doubt In Us because it’s so sweet and easy

Currently reading: hmmm actually actually read, or books that I really absolutely definitely have decided I want to start reading Very Soon and have strategically placed it in a pile in a high traffic area of my home, or theory/philosophy books I read a few pages of every few months for the last few years, or (probably danmei) novels that I read a chunk of several months ago and will read more but I just haven’t felt like it yet? because there are dozens of those :P ... actively finishing The Drawing Book by Tania Kovats, various mxtx novel fan fictions or akiangel chainsaw man fan fictions. constantly reading he xuan fan fic ! i just finished vol 2 of the manga Blissful Land, 18th century tibet-based slice of life, (a french translation I got to practice french). I have also been reading in abrupt starts and stops It Was Vulgar and It Was Beautiful, a book about ACT UP and how they used art in their activism in the AIDS crisis.

Current obsession: does this just mean an enthusiastic interest in a topic or something that is consuming you body and soul that you can't escape as much as you would like to while your proverbial wife and children cry themselves to sleep alone at night? tv and movies and music generally is the obsession that devours me, but oddly enough i have been somehow pretty balanced and chill about things lately ... i'm not even gripped with a fervour for he xuan meta as much. i AM often thinking/fantasizing about abandoning living in a city and for a life in the mythical countryside. reading/watching a lot of things about neurodivergence, adhd, trauma, climate change, social activism movements. past obsessions that don't feel as intense i still hold close to my heart: he xuan, the ocean, neanderthals, ancient cave paintings. uhh, coffee. i started taking a ceramics class and it's been really cool, I remember when i was deeply obsessed with the lascaux cave paintings how excited i was by how the drawings seemed so dynamic by how they sat on the three-dimensional and inconsistent surface of the cave in the lumps and hollows of the rock and I couldn't think of anything in the modern world in art in galleries where that was possible and felt this intense nostalgia for 30 000 years ago, but the other day i was like adfjladsjfadlskjf CLAY IS IT! and was getting excited about making a piece like the interior of a cave and drawing on it ... maybe it's a spark of a new obsession

-

ok now is the hard part. i am talkative but SHY!! there is a very small handful of mutuals who say things to me and feels very intense to tag any of the majority of my mutuals who appear in my notes often silently reblogging/liking my posts (as i do the same). i'm going to scroll my dash and when i see an avatar i have good associations with gonna tag you... sorry in advance for perceiving you. please ignore me if you want!

@unfotp​ @muigiel​ @trainstationsparrow @redheadedsidhe @yeyayeya @pretty-dianxia @twinkfvcker @lolitalarva @sparklemotioneer

[marengogo]

UGH!-5: JUNGKOO-GATE

Memories That Cannot Be Erased - by Sim Hee Jin  [The Glory, Pt.2 (Original Soundtrack from the Netflix Series)]

[Music is a very big part of my life and I’m MOSTLY INCAPABLE of writing without music, so I just thought I'd share what I am listening to while writing this]

–🐺–🐺–🐺–

I was going to just play the Sims, while watching youtubers reacting to “The Glory”, Anything BTS, or anything which my mind & soul might deem to be needed at the very present. Needed to feel something, what? I don’t quite know myself, maybe something that will help me finally carry on with my project? Maybe something that will make me feel happy for the time being, at this very moment? Or maybe just something that will make me feel like I can forget that there are so many thing I must remember, at least for one fucking day. Yeah, I was going to do all of that right at this very moment, and I still will, but now it will be after I’m done writing this. 

So I am here writing this because I couldn’t stop myself from doing so, because, AND HEADS-UP THIS IS ABOUT TO GET VERY GRAPHIC ✌🏾, when one is pressing to go to the toilet, they should. Trying to hold it in, is very bad for your system as a whole, same goes for throwing up or sneezing, or anything else which obviously your body has decided that “yeah no, this can’t stay here, it's gotta to go. Now”. So release myself I will, but like everything else in life EVERYTHING AND ANYTHING there is a place for such activity. When it comes to excrement, the toilet is such a place. When it comes to sneezing, opening your mouth widely into someone else’s face is not the place. When it comes to my feelings, with regards to a specific topic, my blog is one such place.

In real life, I am the type of person that cracks jokes to no end, because it makes me happy knowing that I was the person who was able to make you laugh; I love it, I almost crave it. I am the type of person who would choose friendship over romance, in the sense that if we are going to have a crush on the same human, I will step back and that is a fault, nothing to brag about, at all, because I don’t like unprovoked conflicts when your life has been a constant fight, after fight, after fucking fight, you will quickly try to veer clear of any, if you can and also I grew to be very selfish about my romantic ideal, in my head, if you really liked me like that, I shouldn’t have to compete with someone else also another fault, to a certain degree, so I’ll just keep being me, wait, and see; if we are not meant to be, I’ll be just as fine on my own, I got used to it. I am the type who is also so patient and nonchalant that, if you don’t know me, you will straight away peg me as the person you can easily walk all over, if you do know me, you will be carefully looking for ways to intelligently tell me anything, and if you love me friend or lover you know you can just come at me and we will get at it, whatever “it” may be.

Out of the many things that I am not, forgetful is one. I will remember anything: trivial, important, bad, good, numbers, shapes of clouds, you name it; I will remember it AND WHAT A FUCKING NIGHTMARE THAT IS and let me tell you, a memory like that is usually the product of a well trained self-defense mechanism process, so also nothing to brag about. I am not a person who can sit and watch seemingly innocent people take an unwarranted beating, be it physical or emotional, because I was once there myself and I wished someone else stood up for me. I am not a saint, through life experience I morphed myself into something far from actually, so I will never truly judge you, unless you ask me to, and anything else will always just be a deliberate relying of my opinion, in my blog.

So what does any of this have to do with Jikook? Hmmm … yesterday’s live, heavily highlighted how people like me, or rather, people who are not like a certain demographic in this fandom, are often not given the benefit of the doubt. It’s all so fucking guilty until proven innocent. It reminded me just how jarringly white and black many seem to be when it comes to Jikook’s relationship in general and as the gray-citizen that I am, it is alway so criminally mind-blowing that I usually have no words and just leave it at that unless being otherwise prompted or if I see someone I care about being pestered. 

Yesterday however, it specifically made me think about JK. I don’t think I’ve ever said this anywhere in my blog but I heavily relate to JK in his way of thinking, and perhaps also feeling soulwise I think I might be closer to Yoongi, but we are about to find out soon enough, which is probably why I like JM so much 😜😜😜. Because, people such as myself and JK tend to either joke or stay calm as their MO, we usually don’t speak about important things with people we don’t know/connect with, and when we do, it might look so out of nowhere, it will end up feeling “uncharacteristic” hence sounding weird, forced and scary 👻 at times.

Out of all that, there is one particular aspect I feel like JK and I have in common, which is the fact that you can't tell me what to do, at all. That is your quickest way to win a ticket at my “I think not, in fact, I will definitely find a way to NOT do what you just told me you want me to do” Show 🤡. The one very big difference I have with JK, however, is that his parents seem to have been the child's personal decisions supportive-type, whereas alas mine were not. So even though in my formative years I was a bit of a loose cannon and did everything I wanted, it was always just as long as it didn’t involve my parents. They had/have working on it, therapy, is a wonderful thing the strongest hold on me. But so … who has a hold on JK? Does anyone even have a hold on him? 

Hobi has expressed how JK is “handsome, but doesn't listen”. Yoongi has expressed how “JK might be a genius but that doesn't mean he doesn't work hard at what he does”. JM has expressed how “JK is different behind the cameras, he is actually cute, but also has a sort of manliness to himself”. Namjoon has expressed how “even though every member of BTS is important, there is no replacement for Jungkook”. Tae has expressed that “JK is the type of person who has outstanding basic talent”. Jin has expressed, with his caring actions towards JK, how even though JK is formidable, he is still a young man in a big-big world.

Very stubborn. Impossibly talented. Regrettably young.

  That is what I have gathered of JK, thus far. From what we’ve been allowed to experience through footage, from what the members have conveyed when talking about him and from JK’s “art/work” itself as fans. The one person who hasn’t had a problem in often pegging him as cute is JM. Namjoon has time and again pointed out how JK is a softie with the body of a rock, yes, but JM always attempts to point out the fact that JK in reality is just a big ball of softness, but he is then quickly “silenced” when instantly confronted with the fact that he is the “resident mochi” … we won’t get into that particular monicker today so he just ends up agreeing 😬. Why am I pointing this out? Do I think JM controls JK? … 😂😂😭😭 … Please 😑, if they are in a relationship, JM would be a lover not a ruler.

JM has a very big influence on some of the final decisions he makes, I honestly do believe that, but JK is first and foremost his own “unique” person, who however, for at least a good 10 years, had no other choice but to listen to a whole lot of other people. Control is a very big aspect of my life: I literally FEAR losing it. Reason why I am scared of trying sleeping pills, reason why I’m scared of falling asleep while on plane, reason why I don’t do drugs, but at the same time reason why UNFORTUNATELY I drink an unhealthy amount, ever since I figured out that I always remember everything i’ve done and I that I do get loose just enough not to lose myself. Basically, the second I feel like someone is trying to take “control away” from me and if I am in a position where I can I lash. 

And by that I don’t mean that Imma scratch you obviously, just means that within 3 second of the happening I would have already formulated plan A-Z in order for me to either regain the control I lost, or find ways to soothe me and give me the apparent comfort I need to feel like I have regained some sort of control I am a master at self-soothing. At that very moment, what is paramount, is knowing that from that moment on, every single decision made involving me would be made by myself and myself only. Meaning that, at that very moment, if you saw me being undecided between broccoli and kale juice, and you kindly offered your opinion, without me asking, I would most certainly feel the sudden craving for a vanilla ice-cream cone instead.

As an introvert I’ve often found comfort within my room. Is where I’ve created most of my projects, where I’ve taught myself a whole language, where I was safe from bullying, where I could allow myself to dream, where I am 100% in control. When I’m in comfort zone, I tend to not think much about what I do, even if 85.13% of the times what I do will not make sense to anybody and has made people call me “crazy”, at that moment, it made sense to me, because i decided to it, so I would quite frankly, not give a fuck. Anyways, me and my room are the main reason for the struggle people I love have when I rather stay home than go for a day out. Once I am out, I’m the light of the party; just gotta get me there 😬. 

As it just so happens, JK seems to have found one of his comfort zone in “talking” to ARMY. He maybe has an excuse to escape from whatever it is that he actually needs to be doing/thinking of, while at the same time he shows ARMY that he is alive: WIN-WIN. Reason why he drinks with us, he entertains us, does his laundry with us, eats with you, WEVERSE-living might be providing JK with a way for him to momentarily gain control while at the same time conceding it because he is fulfilling his role as idol, he is promoting things , etc without causing any causing much of any rifts in his comfort zone. So when people ask him not to drink, to go to bed, whatever it is, if it goes against what he was there for, do not for a second think he will do any of it; because in that very moment we are most likely just a part of his well constructed comfort zone.

So this should go without saying, but it is clearly NOT sticking with some people out there. When you are looking to get some reaction from Jikook as a couple, something that will give you the fix you need for the day, week, whatever, please kindly be reminded that not only their relationship isn’t confirmed, but it is also not a paid subscription show, so they don’t owe you shit. JK is not touching JM the way you want him to? JM is not with JK in the palaces you want him to? Jikook are not doing lives the times you want them to? It is all very sad and all but it also all very much sounds to me like you problem. Thus, please be reminded that there are MANY DIFFERENT TYPES of people on this sphere, and as it is hard enough to live a life as them, as me, as JK, as JM, as you, as anybody, a little bit of consideration, and “thinking before you speak” goes a bloody ass long way. 

Happy Easter, stay safe 🫰🏾💜

Always respectfully yours,

Marengo.

#Marengo Goes UGH! #Netflix Isn't Free but more Satisfying #Jikook #JK is his own person - Like I am - Like you are

[artsyjesseblue]

Decoding Voltron’s Rosetta Stone

Paladins, I think it is time we had a discussion

For some time, I’ve had this theory about VLD floating in my mind (it has to do with Lotor’s story arc) and I’ve been itching to write it out. I noticed some recurring themes (I’ll refer to them as leitmotifs) that are sprinkled around strategically, both in the TV show and in the VLD comics, and they always made me think that they mean more than just entertaining, silly subjects for cute kids’ stories. 

 Disclaimer: this theory I am proposing does not claim to hold the absolute truth and I might be proven otherwise if some day we’ll get the #realVLDS8, but it’s nevertheless fun to explore. It comes out of a place of love for Voltron and its talented creators. It explores the complexity of the scripts, the amazing creativity that lies within them, and touches on what could have been, if these allegorical stories were allowed to fully manifest in S8. 

Also, some parts of what I am about to present have been discussed either in the general fandom, or written as metas, and I will quote and attach links to each of the sources. If I might have missed any references, please let me know and I will add them. 

  Buckle up, as this is not short, but it is FULL of symbol reveals. If you’re not ready to read the full article, bookmark it for later, but don’t skip parts, as they are all related to each other.

—> In the TV series, we are blessed with a few of what you would consider… filler episodes. Think “Monsters and Mana”, “The Depths” (yes, that one with the mermaids), “The Voltron Show” (the one where Coran-the-showman gets a brain worm)”, “The Feud” (the Garfle-Warfle Snick show). 

 —> The VLD comics are basically fillers in their own right, in that they do not affect the main plot in any way. I’ll briefly go over the symbolism from the main show episodes and then dive into a deep analysis of the comics. 

 There are several types of leitmotifs floating around in these ‘filler’ parts and they are tied to specific (and symbolic) entities. In no particular order, here are a few that stood out to me: 

  - the show-runner

  - the dragon / monster enemy

  - the witch 

  - the food source for the monster

  - the oppressed people of a certain planet / realm / village

  - the brain-controlling beings (brain worms, mushrooms, mind-swishing aquatic plants)

  - certain colors and color schemes. 

  (You might wonder by now why I don’t use the word “trope” instead of “leitmotif”, which seems a bit academic and antiquated. Trope also refers to a recurring theme, but, imo, it’s a more recognizable topic, it makes you quickly understand where it comes from and what it hints at, whereas these leitmotifs I’ll be discussing are embedded into the story in a very subtle way. Surely, you can say that the Dragon is a trope for the Big Bad Guys, but peel off that layer and you’re entering into a whole new level of meta. “It’s super meta, it’s like inverse meta” -  is something that one of the Voltron Executive Producers mentioned in an interview, referring to certain episodes of S8. I’d say there are many other places where they apply the “super meta”, as I’ll further analyze. Layer upon layer of meta. Especially the dragons and monsters. Just like snakes shed their skin, these dragons will start shedding their scales meta-layers and… reveal to us something else.)

  These mysterious repeating themes make me seriously think about the foreshadowing role they play. Because moving around the same idea, so many times, embedded in various story formulas, gives me the impression that someone is trying to say “shhh, watch out, there’s more than meets the eye.” 

  And to quote Pidge in one of the comics… “Stupid symbolism!!” (in the same scene, she also remarks: “The whole place is a map”). Hmmm… Are these ‘filler episodes’ some sort of actual clues, ‘stupid’ symbols for something that was to be revealed? (but we never fully got, and that’s another story). The irony of the word ‘stupid’ is not lost on me and I’ll circle back at some point to the subject of Socratic irony in VLD, because I think it’s also really important and intimately linked to these subtle leitmotifs.

  Before I begin, one more thing I’d like to point out about comics illustration and animation, in general. Almost nothing that is used in the process of animation is random. It is calculated within the resources given: you have a certain amount of airtime and a certain budget, so you have to use them wisely. A full team of story writers, producers, concept artists won’t make a character say something that has little meaning, and pay a team of animators to work for an entire week, just for a useless piece of conversation. Sure, there are parts that are meant just with small roles, of tying together different scenes, for creating a comic moment, etc, but when a character says something that sounds out of the ordinary, do pay attention to that. With that in mind, let’s focus on the following adventures of our Paladins:   MONSTERS AND MANA So I’ll start with the easiest and most obvious one, because this was discussed and analyzed already: S6E3 “Monsters and Mana”. This is a slam-dunk, as you can probably already imagine.

  And since I’m lazy enough to not start talking again about something that has already been dissected in great detail, here’s the most relevant stuff from the Voltron wiki page:

  “This entire episode uses the trope of having a tabletop Dungeons & Dragons-like game predict future events in the real world. Key elements include:

The Innkeeper (Dakin) to whom Pidge and Hunk bring their crystal represents Lotor and his use of the trans-reality comet. The Innkeeper's betrayal foretells that of Lotor, as also his using of the heroes' energy represents his harvesting of Altean's quintessence. Shiro's dying and being reborn as an identical Paladin foretells the revelation that he himself is one of many clones. The Innkeeper's transformation from fast-moving sorcerer into Coranic Dragon foreshadows the forming of the Sincline Beast which has a similar appearance complete with tail. Use of the Blazing Sword foreshadows the reappearance of Voltron's flaming sword, just as its destroying the Coranic Dragon by fire foreshadows Sincline’s being defeated by quintessence overload.”

  Adding my own note to the above:

  At the end of the episode, Coran tells Shiro: “The game isn’t over yet. Wait until you find out who Dakin was working for. Maybe you’ll finally be able to avenge your master.”

 So the game is not over yet, after they destroyed the Coranic Dragon (the Sincline). Just like in the real story, where even after defeating Lotor, they still had one more enemy - Honerva. Wait until you find out who Dakin (Lotor) was working for (i.e. who had power over him/what he was really up to/what were his real intentions, etc).

  Something that intrigued me is the fact that the Coranic Dragon monster has a sort of bathelm similar to Honerva’s (including the color scheme). We might not see only a battle with the Sincline, but this might suggest another layer of meta: the final battle with Honerva.

You might think I’m seeing too much in this, but another intriguing part is the flying unicorn that Shiro Gyro rides in the end, which, yeah, has the color scheme of Atlas, a purple horn (uh-oh!), purple hooves (oops) and an orange mustache on its chest. A Coranic unicorn? 

THE DEPTHS

  Another good example of foreshadowing is S2E2 “The Depths”, which was thoroughly analyzed by @leakinghate, in this article.

  To summarize the episode: Lance and Hunk find themselves in the underwater world of a very friendly Queen Mermaid, called Luxia (symbolic for Lotor), who invites them to eat food from the Baku gardens.

 After watching some mermaid dances, Hunk and Lance fall into some sort of hypnosis. Lance is later abducted by a secret group of mermaids who claim they have a theory about how Luxia is able to control people’s minds - they think it’s through her voice and eyes and by training her people to use hypnotic dances (which sounds quite credible, since Lance remembers a dancer that apparently caused him to fall under the spell). This secret mermaid group is symbolic of Romelle, Keith and Krolia and their conjectures about Lotor. 

  We (the watchers) find out that the queen indeed brainwashed mind-swished her people and she is secretly killing some of her subjects by sending them to “take a swim in the gardens.” (parallel to how we find out from Romelle that Lotor has been ‘harvesting innocent Alteans’). Florona is one of the victims, and, as explained in detail in the aforementioned meta, she bears resemblance to Bandor: red-haired and with a similar color scheme of her clothes. Another similarity is between Plaxum (the lead mermaid from the secret group) and Romelle (same color scheme of clothes and also wearing two ponytail-like projections similar to Romelle’s hairstyle).

  Ultimately, we find out that the real enemy was not Luxia (Lotor), but a sort of sea dragon (note that it resembles a dragon) that lives in the Baku gardens, using the food as a mind-control weapon to lure people into its gardens to eat them. As Luxia explains in the end, “The Baku has been harvesting us all. We are its food source”. And according to Lance, “the queen was the first one to be mind-controlled.”

  Which leads us to the conclusion: are we (the watchers) really seeing the truth through Romelle’s eyes, or are we being deceived? Because it turns out that Plaxum’s theory about Luxia using voice hypnosis was false, which Plaxum actually acknowledges: “Well, I did say they were theories. Mer-science isn’t always about getting the right answer.” So then, it stands to reason that Lotor was not the bad guy after all, as we were lead to think, but there’s something more dark and devious lurking out there - which there was, indeed, it was Honerva and the Dark Entity she was possessed by. Unfortunately, the part where Lotor (Luxia) gets redeemed was blatantly skipped in Lotor’s case. Also, to this day, the Altean Colony is still a mystery (“an empty facility”, according to Kolivan); but we could infer parts of the truth from all these foreshadowings). 

—> The really interesting detail in Hate’s meta was the “red herring” theory - which was actually the spark that turned my attention back to the comics. 

  As quoted from Wikipedia, “A red herring is something that misleads or distracts from a relevant or important issue. It may be either a logical fallacy or a literary device that leads readers or audiences towards a false conclusion.” Florona is… a fish mermaid with red hair. Both Bandor and Florona have red hair… and we, the readers, are led to believe what Bandor has said: “Lotor… the other colony… It’s all a lie.” And, wait, I just remembered. Guess who brings Romelle to Allura’s castle: Keith… the Red Paladin. (OK, I’ll probably get side-eyed for this one, but I’m just saying: what if red herring Keith was wrong about Lotor, and through him, we were all deceived?). 

  And this is where I started to see more… red in a purple world.

  Every time I got to see a red-colored character, I had to question it a little bit and dig deeper. (including Coran - well, his hair is not red-red, it’s more orangey, but you could traditionally call him a red-haired guy if you saw him on the street, right?). And guess what Coran said at the end of “Monsters and Mana”: “I also made it all up, Shiro. That’s the magic of Monsters and Mana.” Well, so Coran acknowledges (to us, the public?) that he’s a bit of a fabricator… “I’m Coran-Coran, the non-truth telling man”, says the little Coranic head popping out of the Whac-a-mole console, in the “Clear Day” episode. And now go back to the flying unicorn and see that it has a red mane. 

  “The Voltron Show” and “The Feud” don’t really pertain to the subject of this article, except there is a detail that falls into the category of the mind-controlling leitmotif: the brain worm that infects Coran, enslaving him to the will of that tiny creature. Which proves that the writers had a clear inclination towards this dear subject: something small that can take over your mind and incapacitate you, against your will (so far we’ve had the food in the Baku gardens and the brain worm. But there’s more to come.)

  Let’s just have a little pause and look back at what I presented so far: the general conclusion I got from all these episodes is that not everything we see at a first glance turns out to be true.

THE COMICS

  Alright, now that I discussed the subject of the VLD episodes, I’ll move on to the less evident pieces of the puzzle: the comics. Weeee!!!

Written by show head writers Tim Hedrick and Mitch Iverson, the comics are part of the canon (some bits and pieces from the comics are actually mentioned in certain episodes, like the Yalexian pearl and some other stuff I can’t remember now).

  Although the comics seem to be created as entertaining adventure stories with lots of monsters, so that kids can get a little more action kick out of the show, I see more than that. I see leitmotif after leitmotif, singing a long song about foreshadowing. 

  There are going to be monsters and dragons, princesses, brain-infecting entities (again), witches, food sources, populations that are oppressed by certain monsters, and I think I pretty much enumerated the most important recurrent themes. And red. Lots of red. (I am adding orange to this category, because… you’ll see). 

  The story plots in the comics do not seem to parallel the main storyline as neatly as they metaphorically did in “Monsters and Mana” or “The Depths”. Nevertheless, the recurring themes are there, scrambled in no apparent order. And the big, final conclusions will be the same: nothing is what it seems, watch out for red herrings.

  So let’s start with Volume One of the VLD comics.   Spoiler alert: I’ll loosely describe the plot at times, to better understand the succession of events.

  The Paladins and Coran head off to some training grounds (I won’t enter into details with alien names and such, unless I’ll find it significant). Coran meets this guy who takes him hostage due to unpaid debt, and in order to free him, the Paladins must bring him the “Yalexian pearl”. 

  First adventure is on a planet where they find a bug-looking monster - which they assume is the Yalex - and by forming Voltron, they rush to kill it... 

… only to find out that the monster was actually protecting the inhabitants of the planet from another monster, called Abomination…

How ironic - what kind of monsters are the Paladins?

 This is where it becomes interesting. In order to get protected, the planet dwellers explained that they would feed the Guardian monster a giant bowl of their food and a few of their people. (“sacrificed a few to preserve the future for millions” sounds familiar?). But now that the Guardian monster was gone, they were left without protection in the face of the Abomination. 

  Wait. Time out. So… who exactly did Lotor call an “abomination” in S6? Oh, that’s right, Honerva! 

In the main story, Honerva simply walks into an Altean colony of peaceful, naive people, without any opposition, deceiving them into following her plans. So they were basically left unprotected, because their defender (*cough* Lotor-the-bug-monster) was gone. (Also, remember what Romelle said about him: “Lotor is a monster.” Um… a Guardian monster?)

  And let’s take a closer look at the Abomination creature from the comic, then look at the rift monster, and Honerva’s mecha:

What did Lotor whisper in Allura’s ear, in her vision from “Clear Day”?… “If you can become one with the Entity…” So, yes, it’s canonically established that “becoming one” with that rift entity is a thing. Not only that, but they also show us that robots can fuse with each other: Honerva’s mech with the Sincline, Atlas with Votron. Honerva/Haggar and the Rift Monster (aka The Dark Entity) are melded into One entity, the Abomination.

  The rift entity craves for more Quintessence. It is its food, its life source (it hails from the Quinessence field, right?). “Quintessence is life” whispers a very sick Honerva, before she became Haggar. Both Zarkon and Haggar become obsessed with obtaining more Quintessence, after they fall prey to (become one with) the rift creatures.

How did Voltron defeat the Abomination monster in the comics? By feeding it with some good food that Hunk prepared. It becomes docile if it’s being fed. Food//Quintessence is life. Little unsettling detail: they added the dead Guardian monster to the pot of food.

Wasn’t Honerva ‘eating away’ the life of other beings by dissolving them in her dark magic spells? Remember how she went to Kral Zera and killed all the Galra generals:

(My theory about why Kolivan didn’t find anything at the second Colony - yet with no hard evidence - is that Haggar melted everything and everyone in that purple magic mandala of spells, to gain their power and knowledge. We know from canon she did that also to the old paladins. She also did it to the Sages of Oriande! (she basically cheated her way through the lessons in Altean alchemy). If the Alteans on the second colony had some sort of knowledge or power, she would surely want to gain it. Plus, they're not NAIVE, like the main colony. They know who she is and what she's capable of, as I will later discuss, so they WOULDN'T HAVE FREELY GIVEN HER THEIR SECRETS. She FORCEFULLY took them. If Kolivan said he found an empty facility… that would make sense. She does not… leave traces.)

*********

  Back to the comic book analysis: we’re on to a new adventure. They’re still after that Yalexian pearl, but now they have to ask princess Malocoti where they could find it. But the princess is held captive by a dragon… Here comes the dragon metaphor again, and it’s very very red, and orange.

And the princess appears to be trapped inside the castle:

But wait, what do you know? The Paladins figure out that the real princess is not the purple lady in the castle, because she’s actually a witch, casting spells and controlling the red herring dragon.

Look who also controls a certain prince trapped inside a "dragon":

Finally defeating the witch, the red dragon transforms into a beautiful princess Malocoti, who has the same red-orange (vermilion) hair color, with orange and yellow clothes. And she says this: "But somehow, even though I was just an enraged, screaming monster, you could see who I really was, deep down inside."

Mmmmkayyy… So princess Malocoti, while under the witch’s spell, was an “enraged, screaming monster.” Let’s see how the Sincline faired, while under Honerva’s spell... Talk about an enraged monster! (and… about the screaming part… go back to the rift battle from S6) 

And Merla actually figured it out, too, because she realized Lotor’s extreme violence was very uncharacteristic to him. She yells at her fellow acolyte to “get out of there, now!” The real Lotor is there, inside that beastly dragon, underneath the layers of spells cast by the Entity/Honerva, and you can see the dark magic glowing in Sincline’s purple eyes. 

  But wait, you might say: 

 - That dragon is very vermilion. The Sincline is blue-violet. Colors that are at the opposite sides of the color wheel - the first one is on the hottest side of the spectrum, the other on the coolest (shh, complementary colors)! 

 - Also, the dragon turns into a lady. The Sincline hosts a guy. Opposites again. 

  - Well, look closer at the Sincline, around the neckline and elbow lines. And take any picture of Lotor, in his intricately designed suit. Look at the collar. And around his elbows, where the vambraces end. What color do you see? Orange. The kind of orange that sometimes turns vermilion, sometimes looks more yellow, depending on the scene, the lights… Anyway, it’s the color of Malocoti, isn’t it?…

I’m about to make an outrageous statement, haha, but I propose the theory (don’t hate me, I might be wrong) that Lotor’s body garment, underneath the main suit, is actually orange (or red-orange, vermilion, however you want to call it - the complementary color of his purple-and-blue suit). What if that collar is not decorative or some kind of detachable neck band, but it’s actually a hint at what he’s wearing underneath? I mean, the paladins’ suits feature dark gray turtlenecks, and guess what color their body garments are?

Wait, did I just say that Lotor is a vermilion herring? (Grape boi with orange peel omg what…) Haha, well, he did distract us from the ultimate enemy - Honerva. Add to that the fact that Dakin from “Monsters and Mana” is also red-haired. Oh. Boy.   

   - Also, because in the comic book, Lance couldn’t save a prince from a castle, they had to use the trope of saving the princess (moreover, it was all written with a lot of humor (and irony) at Lance’s pick-up artistry).

  Plus, allegories are not supposed to be too evident. Being too literal would spoil it.

  Another way you could look at this is that Malocoti’s vermilion is a complementary color to Lotor’s blue-violet color palette, just as Allura and Lotor complement each other. The colors have been flipped, just like the roles were supposed to be flipped in the VLD story: the princess was to save the prince; exactly the opposite of Lance’s dream of saving the princess - both in the comic story and in the TV show (which were treated, by the way, with quite a lot of irony). Again - flipping the story… Did I say that too many times? Here it is, one more time, from Hunk breaking the fourth wall at the audience (S3E3):

As a matter of fact, in the comic story, Pidge is the one who makes the final blow, defeating the witch, while Lance… is just screaming. (Although my suspicion is that (in the unaltered S8) Lance actually played a big role in helping Allura save Lotor - and I won’t go into details because I’d lose myself into a whole new meta.)

  The bad news is… we never got to see Lotor’s ‘metamorphosis’ back into a good guy, as foretold in the comic, due to inter-dimensional meddling.  At least I know now, from these precious foreshadowing parts, what we should have gotten:

  A prince that wanted to save his dear people by dedicating his life to protect them from the Abomination. A prince that fell under the spell of an Entity, later controlled by a Witch. A prince that was (supposed to be) saved by a princess and her Voltron team, restored to his original physical state, and who ultimately helped the Paladins defeat the common enemy (foreshadowed by Malocoti helping Voltron in its next adventure). Also, let’s remember what he tells Allura in her vision: “You and I desire the same thing. We both seek to destroy Haggar.”

*****

  The next adventure in this first comic book is an interesting mixture of leitmotifs: it brings us the story of a Sphinx that transforms out of a ziggurat pyramid, testing the Paladins through mind controlling mushroom spores (I told you there’s going to be more mind-swishing stuff), chess games and riddles. This part of the book is evocative of the Oriande pyramid and the trials of the White Lion (Coran calls the Sphinx a “a Lion thingy” - the Sphinx is part lion, according to mythology.)

  Sphinxes are mythical creatures regarded as guardians; also, stemming from the Greek myth of Oedipus, we have the story of the Riddle of the Sphinx.

  The Sphinx/Pyramid says: “I am a repository for great research.” That’s what Allura and Lotor did at Oriande - they researched ancient Altean alchemy. This time it’s Pidge who has to go through the trials.

  Here are the brain-controlling mushrooms. 

  The resemblance with the Dark Entity is fascinating: 

Other than this vague parallel with the Oriande trials, there isn’t much of a resemblance with anything I can think of, that we haven’t already seen in VLD. And that’s because, in my opinion, this part foreshadows something that was completely cut out.   I might be wrong, I’m entering into a speculative area, but I think this might be related to one of the most overlooked parts of the show’s finale, in S8E12, “The Zenith”: the one where the Voltron-Atlas mecha chases Honerva through collapsing realities, while Coran, Slav and Holt (the three scientists) pilot the Oriande pyramid left behind by Honerva, trying to maintain the rift stability. Both are accompanied by footages of Coran’s and Keith’s shocked expressions, as they realize they won’t make it.

  From what we see, it’s clear as daylight that both parties find their tragic end, while Honerva continues her journey through realities. She finally finds her son, who rejects her (again). And then, behold, Voltron-Atlas reappears in the skies, coming from, um… out of nowhere. Where exactly did they come from? How did that happen? Why did they waste animation time to have Voltron-Atlas get annihilated, and then miraculously show up again?? They could have saved weeks of animation work by not creating that scene, because it makes zero sense in this context.   Well, it would have made sense if we’d seen what happened to them in the zone beyond realities. After all, there are three scientists piloting a pyramid that used to hold the ancient knowledge of Altea. And there used to be a White Lion, that looked like a Sphinx. Pidge is the scientist of the Paladins, and the comics put her through three distinct trials:

  First is to test her body fitness by fighting against mind-controlled Paladins. 

  Next is to test her intelligence against herself in a game of chess with her own mind. 

  Last test is about finding the answer to a riddle: “What can be totally broken apart and yet reform stronger than ever?” - and the answer is not Voltron, it is HOPE. 

  Perhaps the three scientists also go through some trials.

And looking at the tests, I believe each test is actually fit to hit exactly the Achilles’ heel of the three men:

Coran: never good at body combat. Actually, feeble would be an appropriate word for him.

Holt: smart, but how smart compared to his own offspring, Pidge?

Slav: obsessed with calculating probabilities, but HOPE beats ALL odds.

  Well, hope, my friends, is what makes the team of Paladins get up and try to continue their fight. In the actual VLD episode, before they lose to the collapsing reality, Keith gives a moving speech … “we need to get up”… and the message he gives everyone is to keep trying, keep going. That implies they need to have hope. In the end, the Sphinx is forced to admit that both answers are correct. Voltron was totally broken apart by falling into nothingness, yet the hope of the Paladins will resurrect it (and most likely some extra help from the three science men).   I believe the three men in the Pyramid play a really big role in helping the Paladins survive and continue their chase across realities. Besides, that would be the last time we see Coran and Allura in the same life dimension, before she dies/transcends. He never had a chance to say goodbye to her, like the Paladins did. And he is basically her adoptive father, her custodian. Why would he not deserve a proper goodbye?   And there is a symbolic meaning to it, as well: three scientists, number “three”, a powerful number, as we'll see towards the end of my meta.

  Taking a little break from the foreshadowing analysis, I just want to emphasize how awesome this part is in describing the real Pidge, who: keeps a dossier on each of her friends; knows each of their strengths and weaknesses; figures out even how to defeat herself at a chess game. And she genuinely admits: “It’s my nature.” Through Pidge’s dossier, we also get a very nice insight into each Paladin’s character. In a way, this comic issue is the reader’s private research repository for the Voltron show, opening a window into their personalities. 

 While I don’t see a flow of events in the comics that would mirror the exact succession of episodes in the show, the pieces of repeating themes and stories are there, in a scrambled order. Some of them clearly foreshadow things to come, while others, in my opinion, foreshadow things that were supposed to come, but they were later deleted (remember, this comic book was released in 2016, while the last episode of VLD aired at the end of 2018).

********

  The last issue of this book sends us to the most secret place of all, the final destination in their adventure, where they are to recover the Yalexian Pearl…

  Grab yourself a drink; we’re about to get into some very, very interesting territories. 

  They land on a moon… (oh, a moon, how interesting!)

…and they meet a camel-like alien wearing steampunk Burning Man goggles, a gas mask (for harsh desert conditions on a moon with methane atmosphere) and a red skirt-cape; he speaks in pompous, cryptic phrases, which Lance dismisses as “looney-tooney”.

  As a High Priest, he brings them to the “temple of the Yalex”, which is a sort of a grain processing facility, where other camel-looking creatures sit around the room, ruminating.

  Since I think this contains too much symbolism, I’ll type out the most relevant portion of the dialogue, below. The bolded words are the ones I consider to bear most metaphorical weight:

Camel Priest: “This is the Temple of the Yalex.”

Shiro: “There don’t seem to be enough of you here to grow all this grain.”

Camel Priest: “Oh, we did not do it alone. The rest of our people left the moon and returned to Krell after the growing season [Krell is the main planet - where princess Malocoti and the Sphinx live]. Only the High Priests remain. We will stay here and devote our remaining days to bring about the Yalex. 

Keith: “Why are they chewing up the grain and spitting it in those jars?”

Camel Priest: “Here we dry the grain, then masticate it and preserve it in the cuspidors[a cuspidor is a spittoon - a receptacle for spitting into] . When they are full, we carry them to the Eye of the Evershadow and pour them in.

Hunk: “Ewww. Why?”

Camel Priest: “To feed the Spirit of the Moon. To strengthen him. 

Lance: “Okay, this guy is looney-tooney.”

Pidge: “Wait! Is that the Pearl?”

Camel Priest: “Yes…”

Pidge: “I knew it! The whole place is a map. Score one for Pidge!”

Camel Priest: “…the Pearl, the Moon, the Eye, Time, Life, all are the circle. Never ending, never broken.”

Pidge: “Aw. Stupid symbolism.”

Lance: “OK, this guy is definitely looney-tooney. Let’s go look for the Yalex.”

Camel Priest: “You do not need to look for it. Can you not see the calendar? The Yalex comes soon.”

Shiro: “Who told you this?”

Keith: “How do you know when it’s coming?”

Camel Priest: “We follow the ways of the Haruspex” [a haruspex in ancient Rome was a person trained in reading the omens from the entrails of sacrificed animals - see more details here] “She tells us of the end times. Come, let us feed the Moon Spirit.”

Shiro: “So, this Yalex, what is it?”

Camel Priest: “None living have seen the Yalex. Seeing the Yalex means death. The Yalex is the end of days.”

Hunk: “That doesn’t sound good.”

Camel Priest: “Of course it is good. Our lives here are lived in ignorance. When we die, all is revealed, and we continue our journey under the watchful eye of the Conqueror.”

Lance: “But what about the Pearl?”

Camel Priest: “The Yalex is the Pearl.”

Lance: “It is?”

Camel Priest: “The Pearl of Wisdom that comes at the end of time. The Yalex is Creator and Destroyer, Treasure and Terror, Redeemer and Annihilator, Savior and Executioner, One is All, the Fire in the Dark, the eye that is blind is most prized!”

Lance: “Looney. Tooney.”

Hunk: “Are you sure the Moon Spirit likes camel spit?”

Shiro: “Your Holiness, we mean no disrespect to your customs, but we have a friend who is going to die unless we can find a Yalexian Pearl, and…”

Rummmble…

Camel Priest: “At last! The birth that is death has begun!”

[the Yalex beast hatches out of the shell of the moon, destroying it and blowing everyone into space, as confirmed by Hunk: “I’m alive, but “Okay” got blown up with that moon.”]

The following exposition will probably put me in the looney-tooney category as well, yet I insist on displaying my crazy crack theory to the world. So, here we go. 

  Some of you might have inferred already. It is indeed time we had a discussion about the second Altean colony.

   My theory is that here lies the truth about what exactly the Alteans on the second colony (the moon colony) were doing, and with what purpose.

  Overall, this story seems to revolve around the leitmotif of preparing food for the Spirit of the Moon. Food that is made of grains, chewed (ruminated) by camels and spat into collecting cuspidors. 

  —-> What are camels in our real world? They are special animals in the pseudo-ruminant category (cattle are ruminants - with four-chambered stomachs; camels are pseudo, because they have three-chambered stomachs). Without entering into a million anatomical details about camels (which you can find out quickly by doing a wiki search - it’s actually fascinating, truly!), I can say with much astonishment that camels are a wonder of nature, adapted to the very harsh conditions of the desert, travelers capable of resisting without water for a week; their bodies are designed to avoid overheating through some truly amazing (almost magical) internal adaptations.

  Top that information with a bit of symbolism about camels, collected from various cultures. This animal is emblematic for endurance, sacrifice, forbearance, toughness. These resilient guys can tolerate a lot of crap and sacrifice themselves for their masters. 

  Now let’s go back to the book narrative and what the Camel Priest says about the other people in the Temple: “Only the High Priests remain. We will stay here and devote our remaining days to bring about the Yalex.” Only the High Priests… Devote… 

  —> Who exactly did Lotor allow to go to the second colony? According to Romelle, they were “viable candidates”, who were given a “series of tests”. “Those who were fit for the journey were loaded onto a cargo ship and taken to the second colony. It was considered the highest honor.” From what we infer from her story, the chosen ones were quite freely and happily choosing to go. Again, citing Romelle, they had an “unquestioning devotion”. 

 “…devote our remaining days” -  here, I sense that it’s implied they’ll die after completing their task - correct me if I’m wrong. I initially thought it might also mean “our remaining days on this moon”, but I don’t think so.

 “…to bring about the Yalex.” - to cause the Yalex happen, to create the Yalex - I’ll get back to this one in a bit. 

  In the comic, the story explains that “the rest of the people”, who are not high priests, returned to Krell. 

 —> In the Altean story, there were these sentries that Lotor used, mainly as support personnel, and who had access to both colonies. Lotor “travels there all the time”, Romelle tells us. Surely, he travels there with his sentries. Could these be the non-magical guys that return to the mother planet when not needed? They might even travel outside of the Quantum Abyss - most likely they are the ones transporting those mysterious cargoes with pure Quintessence.  Across the show, they seem to appear to be some sort of scientists, or even medics, as they pop up in various episodes. @violethowler has a thought-provoking meta regarding the timing of events around the Altean Colony and neatly postulates the role of these medics/sentries:

Alright, moving on to the weird part where the Priest explains what they are doing there… They masticate the grains and mix them with their saliva (ewww), and then they collect the yucky product (some sort of cud) into these spittoons that look like camel humps, carrying them to the Eye of the Evershadow, to feed the Spirit of the Moon. Welcome to a very spitty description of what Altean alchemy looks like - metaphorically speaking, of course. The very product of their bodies (their saliva) is mixed in with the harvest of that season (the dried grains), collected in cuspidors, and then it is used as a food source for the Spirit of the Moon.

  Where did we see something similar? In S1E10 (Collection and Extraction), where a Druid stands in front of a giant sphere. A coiled tube passes inside the sphere, and raw (yellow) Quintessence flows inside the tube. The Druid then spews out these flashing purple energies out of their body, mixing their energy with the yellow raw material. The result is collected into a small vat underneath, and it looks like bright purple Quintessence, which is the refined result from the raw material.

We also have a verbal explanation from a very nice robot sentry hacked by Pidge:

  “The material is quintessence, the substance with the highest known energy per unit volume in the universe. […] Raw quintessence material is transported here from throughout the galaxy and refined into standardized Galra fuel requirements.”

  So let’s demystify the puzzle. This is how I see it:

  — The dried grains are the raw quintessence (accidentally or not, grains also have a yellow tint). 

  — The camel spit is the Altean energy - basically a product / a secretion of their body, right? 

  — The mix of the spit with the grains is the refined Quintessence (light purple glow in the case of the Druidic product, but on the Altean side it would have a light blue glow). 

  — The refined Quintessence is poured into those cuspidors and then all the vessels are poured into a larger container of some sort, to feed the ‘Spirit of the Moon’ -later hatching out of the moon as Yalex.   As far as I can tell, these High Priest Camels don’t seem to be incapacitated, or chained, or tied up and forced to work, or placed in energy-syphoning pods. It looks like a very liberal environment. Nobody watching them, no one pointing weapons at them. 

  —> Which brings up a statement that Hunk makes in “Monsters and Mana”: “maybe those villagers liked being turned into stone?“ - and again, remember, in animation they usually don’t waste airtime pointlessly.

  Traditionally, the pearl is a symbol of wisdom, especially gained through experience. (A pearl is produced by adding layer upon layer of secretions produced by an oyster - umm… or camel spit, anyone?) And guess what the Priest says: “The Yalex is the Pearl. The Pearl of Wisdom that comes at the end of time.” 

  Ta-daa. 

  OK, still confused? 

  —> Let’s take a look at what Lotor tells Allura before their tragic battle in S6: “Many Alteans perished in my quest to unlock the mysteries of Quintessence.” “Allura, you must understand I’ve given everything I have to plumb the depths of King Alfor’s knowledge, to unlock the mysteries of Oriande.” Umm… wisdom… knowledge… unlock mysteries… It pretty much looks to me like the Camel Temple is the equivalent of a Research Facility, a secret military operation, where Alteans were giving, willingly, freely, out of devotion to their master, everything they had, to unlock the mysteries of the… Pearl of Wisdom. Which resembles a vat of pure Quintessence, doesn’t it? Same milky opalescent white. 

  I know this would contradict a previous theory, that the Alteans were not producing pure Quintessence, and that the mysterious vats of pure Quintessence traveling through unmarked ships were actually coming from Voltron (from when the Komar weapon extracted it). I cannot deny or confirm either theory at this point, I’m simply following what I’m finding, as I try to be as unbiased as I can. 

  In any case, what I am seeing here is not comparable to what Keith, Krolia and Romelle saw. I don’t see Alteans suspended in pods, life being sucked out of them without consent, but I see active people freely giving their energy away. Like the Alteans on Atlas, gathered around the ship’s crystal, in S8E11, or the Alteans and Balmerans gathered on the Balmera asteroids. 

  And here comes Lance’s first teasing at the apparently incredible scene from inside the Temple: “Looney-tooney.”

  In contrast to Lance’s ignorance (which is actually inserted not just to simply show off the comedic side of Lance, and I’ll circle back to that in a minute), Pidge figures out that the Pearl is hanging from the ceiling of the Temple and she also adds: “The whole place is a map. Score one for Pidge!” 

  Whoops! A map is a guide. It plots, it outlines the directions to a place, a story… Is this little story THE MAP to Voltron’s secret treasures?? 

   Wait, I’m not done. 

   There’s waaay more looney-tooney stuff to explore, and it will blow your mind. I went into this analysis with a general idea based on little clues I observed, but as I peeled off more and more layers, I discovered really unexpected things.  

  Notice again how even Pidge becomes disgruntled as she doesn’t understand all the cryptic language and she remarks: “Stupid symbolism!”, while Lance goes on and on about the Priest being batshit crazy. 

  Well, VLD is notorious for using this kind of technique that tricks the audience into taking the information with a pinch of humor or even dismissing it as unimportant. If we laugh at it, it must be of lesser value, right? Let’s take a look at an example from the TV series, and watch how Lotor’s words are met with derision by Lance and Hunk:

  S5E6: Standing in front of the white hole at Oriande, Lotor recites a poem:

  Lotor: “The wise stand back from the fire,/ fools are burned on the pyre./ The mystic becomes one with the flame,/ the embers and he are the same.”

  Lance: “Is that, like, a song you’re working on? ‘Cause it sucks.”

  Lotor: “It’s a poem by an ancient Altean alchemist. I discovered it carved next to a cave painting of a fiery sphere. I never realized until now that it describes the route to Oriande. We must go into the white hole.”

  Hunk [raising his hand, goofy soundtrack in the background]: “Are you guys serious? Are we navigating by cave poetry?”

  We found out quite quickly that Lotor was right. And this is not the only place where he was right. Coran was sure Oriande was a fairy tale for kids; Lance agreed with Coran… 

  I could give countless other examples in the show where characters laugh at, or scorn others, only to be proven wrong later.

  From a writers’ perspective, this is called Socratic irony. Quoting The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, a Socratic irony is "Socrates's irritating tendency to praise his hearers while undermining them, or to disparage his own superior abilities while manifesting them." In a very subtle, ironic way, the writers are addressing the audience’s intelligence. They’re using the characters to ridicule a scene, only to later prove otherwise. So… when Lance repeatedly says “looney-tooney” about someone, then rest assured… his intended target is quite the opposite, my friends. And if Pidge says… “stupid symbolism”, awww… how smart that stupid part must be! Not only that, but she actually hands out the word “symbolism” freely, as if to say: ‘Here, take it. This comic book is all symbols. Now get your lazy brain cells moving and decode it.’

  Which brings me to the most weird parts of the conversation with the Camel Priest, that really, really sound incomprehensible, at a first glance.

  Alright, here comes the heavy stuff. We’re about to get philosophical:

  “…the Pearl, the Moon, the Eye, Time, Life, all are the circle. Never ending, never broken.”

  “The Yalex is Creator and Destroyer, Treasure and Terror, Redeemer and Annihilator, Savior and Executioner, One is All, the Fire in the Dark, the eye that is blind is most prized!”

  Gosh, I feel like decrypting a David Lynch movie. Have you guys watched the latest (2017) Twin Peaks? Omg, what a trip.

  Let’s start with the easiest ones: 

  The circle - a simple geometric shape. A pearl, a moon, an eye, they all have circular (spherical) shapes. Duh. 

  Expand that to the concept of Life and Time. When time goes in circles, well… it means it’s… cyclical. Does that make sense? Never ending, never broken. History repeats itself. Or… multiple realities, where history repeats within its own iteration. Oh man, heavy stuff. Was this show for 7-year old kids?

  What else looks like a circle/rosetta and can pierce through time and realities? Is there an eye shape in the middle?

Does the Yalex ⬆️ have similar ‘rosetta wings’? Is there an ‘eye’ in the middle? - the most prized (confirmed by Shiro, in the comic, who figured out that specific part of the riddle). The Pearl of Wisdom? Btw, the eye is also a symbol of wisdom, in various religions.

This… this…  is also round-shaped, and has… four spidery legs - and as you’ll see below, this is the key to understanding the whole VLD vocabulary:

“Creator and Destroyer” —> remember Allura’s words to Honerva at the end of the show? “I can change the Quintessence within your vessel. Your son helped me learn how to transform it from a destructive force to a life-giving force.”

   “Treasure and Terror, Redeemer and Annihilator, Savior and Executioner” —> two sides of the same coin: quintessence can be used peacefully, as Alfor (and later Lotor) intended to, providing unlimited clean energy for the Universe; or it can be employed as a violent, horrid form of terror, as demonstrated by Zarkon and Honerva. They annihilated entire planets, executing innocent people. In contrast, Allura redeemed/saved Zarkon and Honerva, also through the power of the Quintessence. 

  It all depends on who uses it. Hard to believe? Listen carefully to some voices from the show, which send us direct, unfiltered messages: 

  S6E4: 

  Shiro: “Zarkon fell prey to his own evil instincts.The Quintessence field didn’t create them, it revealed them.”

  [later on, after Allura and Lotor enter the rift] Allura: “In the hands of the wrong person, this power could easily corrupt.”

  Lotor: “Together, we’ll see it never does.”

  Aside from Shiro and Allura’s statements, notice that Lotor says “together” (and he says it again, some time later: “Allura, we were meant to be together.” Also, from a previous conversation: “I cannot do this without you.”) When they were apart, they both fell prey to their raging instincts, as demonstrated in the dramatic ending of S6. That is one big reason why I believe, in the end (in the #realS8), Allura and Lotor made the final cut of the show, together. As a standing proof that unity provides power against losing yourself to your worse side. They help and lift each other, rising above the flaws of their parents. It is the central moral of the story. Defeating the evil through unity. That’s the ultimate spirit of Voltron. Unity. Sure, it is about family, as Coran says in his final toast, but above that, it’s about Unity. And… “True unity can only be born of love,” says one of the old paladins to Hunk, while inside Honerva’s mind. 

  Moving on to more looney-tooneys:

  “One is All” —> Again, here comes the idea of Unity. This one’s got a slightly different angle, and I’ve discussed it partially before (scroll up to where I talk about the “becoming one with the Entity.”) The way I see it, the rift monster is One, but it is also a sum of its parts, All the small Entities. I believe this whole string of descriptors (one is all, creator and destroyer, bla-bla) is pointing not only to the properties of Quintessence, but to the Entity as well. 

  Whew, this last one is a really philosophical concept, intersecting with theology, as well. Again, not for 7-year old boys and dads that want toys. Just for the fun of it, look up “unity” in your preferred search engine and dive into an extremely complex and abstract realm of Greek philosophy, leading up to the most modern interpretations. 

  How I like to think of it is that once the Entity enters one’s body, a symbiotic relationship is formed.

  So then, the question rises: is the Yalex…

 - the Quintessence energy

 - the Rift Entity 

 - or a Mecha that can pierce through space and time? 

  I believe it can be all in the same time. 

  As confirmed by the Camel High Priest, the Yalex itself is the Pearl (Quintessence), but I propose it is actually more than that. It is the carrier of the Pearl - the Vessel, and together, they become One. You might think Allura said “vessel” just in reference to Honerva’s space-ship. That is one meaning, according to the Oxford Dictionary (“a ship or a large boat”). But vessel also means “a hollow container, especially one used to hold liquid, such as a bowl or cask.” In addition, in religious terms, a vessel is one’s own body. 

  Here’s a detail from one of the official VLD posters. Notice how Honerva’s acolytes carry… vessels with some sort of offerings, food of some sort. Um… Quintessence in a vessel? 

For example, Honerva’s body is the Vessel, the receptacle for the Entity, along with the Quintessence she accumulated (she does accumulate a LOT of it, in the final season - from Oriande, the Alteans, the Balmerans, etc). Her own body then goes inside the mecha, and she almost becomes a robeast, One with the machine. The machine is then, the Vessel. And depending on how she decides to manipulate it, it can be destructive or life-giving. (Allura also let herself be possessed by the Entity, yet she did not turn evil. On the contrary, she became a vector of good.) 

 Want more proof of this concept? The Yalex itself is a receptacle for the Pearl - refer back to the image of the Yalex hatching out of the moon. The Pearl sits inside the Yalex, nested in the middle of that whole wing-eye contraption. 

  “Fire in the Dark” —> didn’t we just have Lotor give us a some cave poetry lessons earlier? “The wise stand back from the fire,/ fools are burned on the pyre./ The mystic becomes one with the flame,/ the embers and he are the same.” I invite you to apply some of your school skills on literary analysis and scoop out some precious, meaningful embers from this one. Note again the repeating theme of “becoming one” with something. Also, the motif of the sphere: Lotor “discovered it carved next to a cave painting of a fiery sphere”. The fire can be both a destructive force and a useful, powerful tool, in the right hands.  

 King Alfor says, in S8E10: “Allura, please listen to me. Alteans are life-givers. The entity you possess is a dark, ancient evil. It’s not the key to winning this war.” Meeeeep - Wrong!! King Alfor was a great alchemist, but he got some stuff completely wrong, and it’s proven by Allura, in her reply to him:

  “I understand your concern. But the entity granted us access to Honerva’s mind. Without it, your spirit would still be cursed.” Yeee, big applause, Allura, you’ve done it! The Entity, under Allura’s alchemic prowess, becomes a tool for good. 

  I could search for more proof that the Entity can also be good, for example in Allura’s hallucinations, when she hears Lance saying: “It won’t do you any harm. The entity will help you. It will save all of us.” And so on and so forth. It’s all sprinkled throughout the series, and we can scoop it all out, once we know what to look for. Once we learn the vocabulary. 

Is this too much? It is a complex show, first of all. This is not the kind of 80’s show where, in each episode, they fight another robot/monster and save the day. The plot is sinuous and full of unexpected. Things mentioned in S3 resurface in S8 (like the Dark Entity), and so on and so forth. That is one reason why, in my view, this show was not for little kids.

  I’m still not done with the analysis. Don’t fall under the game table, please, like when Shiro wanted to be a Paladin again!

  Let’s talk about the Calendar and the Haruspex. 

  A calendar speaks of something that is cyclical… There are seasons that repeat, which means this process of producing Quintessence to feed the Yalex is a seasonal activity. The whole ceiling of the temple looks like an ancient celestial map (concentrical circles), or some sort of astrological chart, and the High Priest says: “Can you not see the calendar? […] We follow the ways of the Haruspex.” and then… this thing:

 Initially, I didn’t notice it. But then… I saw the the Haruspex. And it looks exactly like… Haggar, holding the sphere of dark energy in her hands. In ancient Rome, the Haruspex was a diviner who interpreted the future based on the entrails of sacrificial animals. A sort of a magical person. Borderline witchcraft. Definitely capital punishment under medieval Inquisition. 

  If they had a Haruspex, that means they also had… sacrificial animals (camels/Alteans?). That would confirm that some Alteans indeed were martyred. 

  Maybe there were autopsies performed? By some sort of medics? I might be completely wrong. I’m entering some dark territories here.

  Anyways, they definitely “follow the ways of the Haruspex”, which might mean that, in some way or another, whatever they are doing there is being dictated by some instructions from the Haggarspex. What are they doing? Refining Quintessence. Who else is doing that? The Druids in the Empire.  And Haggar has… omg… Haggar has the specs!! Haggarspex! I kid you not, I just discovered this right now, as I am writing and playing with words. Talk about puns in Voltron!!

  It would make total sense that they follow exactly the same technical principles that Haggar uses, because Lotor, even before becoming emperor, must have had access to some of her stuff (or stolen them - it’s not like he hadn’t stolen stuff from the empire before, see the teludav episode -S3E6). He’s using all the resources he has (and he’s got lots of Galra tech at his disposal), in search of the Pearl of Wisdom, aka the secrets of King Alfor. Alas, he’s going the wrong way about it, because he lacks the Oriande knowledge.

  OK, maybe we’ll scratch the part about autopsies, but sacrifices were made. It is, after all, confirmed by Lotor…: “Were some lives lost in the process? Yes. But they were martyrs to a noble cause. I sacrificed a few to preserve the future for millions.” 

  Where exactly were the sacrifices made? I don’t know yet. I have some suspicions, but let’s keep going.

  “She tells us of the end times. […] None living have seen the Yalex. Seeing the Yalex means death. The Yalex is the end of days.”

  Wow, so once you see the Yalex, you’re out of the game. And because you’re toast, there’s no one left to tell how the Yalex looks like. It is the end of days for you. 

  That means the Yalex is a really dangerous and powerful being. Well, it’s represented as a sort of a giant spider that hatches out of the moon, fed and grown with pure Quintessence from the camels. 

  Then Hunk says: “That doesn’t sound good.”

  And the Camel Priest replies: “Of course it is good. Our lives here are lived in ignorance. When we die, all is revealed, and we continue our journey under the watchful eye of the Conqueror.”

  What kind of nutty stuff is this? 

  First of all, let’s turn upside down what Hunk is saying, for the sake of the reversed irony: That sounds very good - exactly what the priest said. Why is it good? Because they believe that through death, they finally achieve the ultimate wisdom. They are so willing to learn the mysteries of Quintessence, that they consider death the ultimate honor. Isn’t that a martyr’s belief system? Self-sacrifice is the ultimate enlightenment, for the sake of a noble cause. And you can tell that the priest feels confident about his convictions, in the way he formulates it: “of course it is good.” 

  And then he says something that lit up a lot of light bulbs in my humble brain cells: “Our lives here are lived in ignorance.” Oh boy. Where should I start with this one? Firstly, isn’t this what scientists quietly profess? The more you learn, the less you feel like you know. We are all ignorants in the face of the vastness of the science. Then, what is ignorance if not the opposite of… enlightenment? Merriam-Webster says enlightened means: “freed from ignorance and misinformation”. 

  “That is the future enlightenment brings us.” - guess who said that - guess some more —> Lotor (when talking about his ultimate plans - to get into the rift and extract unlimited Quintessence for the empire).

  There’s one more Easter egg in this paragraph. “the watchful eye of the Conqueror.” 

  Who is the Conqueror? You might think initially it is Zarkon or the Galra Empire. But this is about a so-called afterlife, another dimension, a higher plane. I theorize it is, again, about the Entity. 

  “This Entity holds the power you seek. It is an ancient form of energy that predates time itself. It hails from the Quintessence Field. Entities like this gave Haggar the ability to conquer worlds and control the universe for then thousand years.”

  This Entity is able to bypass time and space at its own will, and gives someone the ability to conquer worlds. In my opinion, this is the true, transcendental Conqueror and, probably, the Second Colony Alteans and Lotor believed they could reach the ultimate enlightenment by trying to manipulate it… just like Haggar did. 

  Sounds weird? Lotor himself had the entity - confirmed by the Galra doctors that detected the strange readings in him when newly born. Why wouldn’t he try to use its powers against Haggar? And I strongly believe that this is true, also supported by the EP’s statements about Lotor, in an AfterBuzz interview about S5:

Interviewer: “And then we have weird Quintessence necromancy happening. So how did that affect [baby] Lotor?”

JDS: It’s pretty safe to say that Lotor’s got that Daywalker kind of thing going on. 

Interviewer: Little Vampire. 

LM: Being in…in her womb, as [Honerva] was being exposed to all of this quintessence - it’s part of his DNA. It almost puts him on a level with Allura, pretty much how her quintessence is a part of her DNA. So it’s interesting to see. 

[…]

LM: I think all Galra are kinda space vampires. 

JDS: They’re kinda space vampires, yeah. Safe to say. You’re getting instead of blood, you’re getting like…planet juice."

 Well, ain’t that something… Lotor is a Daywalker. 

 What is a Daywalker? It’s a vampire that can go out in the sunlight, part human - part vampire. I find the comparison with vampire Princess Miyu a little unsettling (quoted from Wikipedia):

  “This is because she is technically a Daywalker, having one human parent and one vampire. She needs to drink blood to survive and she chooses her 'victims' carefully since she apparently cannot take blood from others unless they actually give it to her willingly. So, Miyu picks people whom she believes to be "lovely" (either in looks or personality) who have usually suffered a tragic loss, and offers them their greatest wish – to be with their lost loved ones, at least in their dreams – in exchange for their blood. These people live in an endless dream state.”

  Lotor doesn’t lie about any of the things he tells Allura and the Paladins. So he does walk into the light of truth, indeed. LM and JDS confirm it, too, in the same aforementioned interview:

  LM: I think… when we discussed Lotor, we wanted to make sure that everything he said had an element of like, genuine quality to it—”

  JDS: “Like genuine nature to it, yeah. I mean, he hasn’t really done anything to make you believe he wanted to continue on the path of Zarkon. Even in the time before. He just has his own way about, you know, about these things. So yeah, I think the bigger sort of Lotor story point, or character point was that, you know - one - he means things genuinely, whether he’s playing somebody or not, he sort of follows up with everything that he does. So there’s no real… lie to it, I guess?

  LM: I think when all is said and done we’ll be able to look back and realize that he’s been telling the truth this whole time. It’s just a matter of - where does it go from here?

  JDS: Where does the truth go from here?

  Well, all is said and done. The show has been over for so many years, and yet we’re still looking back and digging for the truth, because the truth about Lotor was, unfortunately, buried. 

  So let’s dig deeper, haha. 

  The Camel Priest ultimately says: “At last! The birth that is death has begun!”

  I think this ties pretty neatly with what happened to Zarkon and Honerva, who, under the influence of the Entity, transfigured into something else. And here’s another snippet from the interview, where LM points to that:

  Interviewer: I was just wondering if maybe that’s why Zarkon was so intent on saving Honerva, not only because he loved her but because she was pregnant.”

 LM: Yeah, I think…

 JDS: Combination, maybe?

 LM: Yeah, I think there’s also a little bit of him that’s… was maybe… had other motives as well. The dude’s kind of dead inside…”

  We saw them resurrect after dying in the rift, didn’t we? With purple evil glowing eyes. Yet they were, apparently, dead inside. 

 So what that means is that when the Camel Priest announces that the birth-death thingy is going to happen, and the Yalex emerges from the moon, they are all going to be possessed by the Yalex, the All is One, Fire in the Dark, the Eye. They ‘die’ inside by letting the Entity take a part of their soul and instead give them the Enlightenment. They continue their journey under the watchful eye of the Conqueror. Oh man…! Heavy stuff.

  So the Alteans… willingly let themselves be possessed by the Entity, following Lotor’s demi-vampire plans to save the universe and defeat Haggar (or at least, DEFEND from Haggar - especially defend the Main Colony). You don’t think so?? We have a precedent! (Though I wouldn’t say it happened before, time-wise speaking. It actually happened after - when Honerva went to the Altean colony and created her mechs and her acolytes.) Were they not infected with the Entity?? Did Allura not scoop one out from Tavo?? Were their eyes not glowy-glowy? And they were all on board with Honerva’s plans from the get-go, so I would logically assume they also agreed with being infected with the Entity. 

  I’d say at this point Lotor is a good vampire, with good and transparently laid out intentions but still with vampire methods, because that’s the only way he knows how to operate - victory or death - although he is desperate to find out the true path, the Oriande path. He’s given all he had to plumb the depths of King Alfor’s knowledge.

  “Lotor may have been misguided, but ultimately, he wanted to preserve life.” As much as I don’t like this sentence from Allura’s final speech to Honerva, I think it has heavy relevance to what I just unfolded here. I honestly was not expecting to reveal this. My initial impressions were going towards a slightly different direction. That’s why I never rely only on initial impressions. 

  The final image in this comic book is Voltron carrying the Yalexian pearl, through a solar system that looks very similar to the Quantum Abyss solar system. The top image is a screen-cap from the episode “Clear Day”, where Allura has a vision of the red planet from the Quantum Abyss, surrounded by the moons. The bottom image is from the comics, with the red planet being planet Krell.

  And guess where Voltron is bringing the Pearl? To rescue Coran from a guy who keeps him hostage. But we soon find out that Coran was lying this whole time!! He was not really hostage, he was just friends with the big guy, and he made Voltron retrieve the Pearl just like Lotor had them retrieve the trans-reality comet. Well-well… Maybe Lotor 'retreived' some ‘Pearls’ (Quintessence) from Voltron as well? (maybe from the Komar weapon?)

  And there’s still more to discuss.

**rolling up sleeves**

  One specific property that the Entity possesses is the ability to make sudden jumps and appear/disappear. 

  Very… jittery. Remember how it bounces inside that tube? 

Who else could appear and disappear at will? Haggar and the Druids. Also… Kosmo (that wolf is, btw, such a mystery. I posit that he’s a result of some colony experiments on animals, using the Entity.) 

  —-> But, more importantly, there’s a fairly obscure group of characters that only show up in one episode… and they can also teleport (it all happens so fast that it’s so easy to miss, but watch S6E2 “Razor’s Edge” when Keith and Krolia enter the Abyss and get attacked). They weren’t given any name, but they seem to be quite powerful and they are part of the big mystery of the Quantum Abyss. 

  I present you the four-legged white creatures that attack Keith and Krolia’s ship. 

  Does it not have a ‘pearl’ that looks just like an ‘eye’ in the middle? Also, look closely at the shape of the creature, and compare it with the Entity… Why do they look so similar? Those four legs… copy and paste, change color to white… 

And go back and look again at the Yalex hatching out of the moon - four-legged, spider legs, as well.

Do they all have an Eye in the middle? 

 And, because I like to watch things in slow-motion sometimes, I just discovered an amazing detail about the white-legged creature: after it teleported inside the cockpit, there is a light blue glow coming out of it, turning into motes of light-blue energy. Altean Quintesseeence!!! 

In the pictures above, the Yalex seems to have grown an additional two legs. Well, I’ll be damned if the Dark Entity doesn’t sometimes have six legs (see above). This seems to be the aggressive pose.

What if… the white-legged creatures in the Quantum Abyss are the Yalexes? They are the Pearls, the white Entities, the ‘positive’ side of the Entity (the saviors), fed by righteous Altean energy. They are the defenders of the Abyss. There are many of them, and the many create One. And they all protect the Quantum from Haggar or any other intruders, including Keith and Krolia, Ranveig, etc… 

  We are led to believe that these creatures are also responsible for tearing apart the unmarked ships transporting the pure quintessence through the Abyss, but if my predictions are correct, that would actually not be true, because it wouldn’t make sense narratively for Lotor’s own defenders to attack ships containing his own Quintessence transports. I believe the creature that attacked and ravaged those unmarked ships was Ranveig’s superweapon, which actually has a name we know, and I have multiple reasons to prove my theory. I will come back to this subject - keep a pin in it.

  These Yalexes (I’ll start calling them Yalexes, alright?) protect Lotor’s research facility and the main Colony. He hopes to unlock the mysteries of the Entity and of the Quintessence. We know, canonically, that Haggar stalked Lotor around the universe and he was always cautious about getting rid of trackers and spies. It’s logical he would want to protect the Quantum Abyss, and we know for sure that there is a history of attempted intrusions - like Ranveig, who’s probes had been destroyed and never recovered, as recounted by Krolia. Maybe these white guys are Lotor’s own ‘druids’. They definitely showed up right at the beginning of Keith and Krolia’s journey in the Abyss, so they were standing at the gates, ready to filter out intruders. 

  And if we want to talk about defending, let’s go to Allura’s mystifying vision in S8E8 - “Clear Day”, where she sees her mother telling her she’s arrived just in time to save them (to save Altea, implied by the Altean castle in the background). She then goes on to say “Only you can protect us.”

  “In time” - ah, maybe I’m interpreting too much - but time is a word that is used as a symbol in the Camel Priest’s dialogue. Also, Krolia tells Keith that the Quantum Abyss is a place where “unusual effects” happen to “space-time itself”. So maybe her mother is actually telling her “you’ve arrived just at the right place, in the Quantum Abyss.”

  Also, in Allura’s dream, she is to save them, protect them… Only she can protect them, because of the powers she gained through the Entity = the Savior. 

  Allura then pilots a Komar mecha, extracting the Quintessence from Altean soil and channeling it towards Galra ships, destroying them. But, in the process, she also destroys the planet, leaving it barren, dry, lifeless, and her mother turns from a living being into a dissipating stone statue, who’s last words are: “I’m so proud of you”. As if she would say: I sacrifice myself, proudly, gladly, so that you can defend Altea.  

  Why a stone statue? Similar to the villagers that ‘liked’ being turned into stone, in Monsters and Mana? 

  The way I see this, it’s an insight into how the Quantum Abyss defense system worked. Everyone (represented in the dream by the Altean soil itself, the juniberries, the statue) put their energy together to feed these Yalexes, to defend themselves from intruders. In the end, they were all drained of their vitality, because they did not have the Oriande alchemy knowledge of how to properly infuse an ore (and the ore was not from a comet). So they would wither and die, or almost die… 

  Remember how exhausted the Alteans on Atlas were, after channeling their energy into the Atlas crystal? Honerva tells them to give her all their energy, because “their lives will be sacrificed for their savior.” Merla knows the consequences and interrupts the process, in order to rescue them. 

And this ⬆️ is where I turn my eyes to the emaciated, scarred Alteans floating in the so-called Quintessence draining pods from the Second Colony, as described by Romelle and Keith in S6E4.

  In my opinion, they were not being sucked of their energy in those pods. They were actually exhausted after working their butts off to feed Yalexes with refined Quintessence through a process learned from Haggar’s specs (the unrefined Q was, as described in the comic, a crop, a grain harvest, so raw energy either directly from them or extracted from another source, even from the native natural environment or maybe even brought from the empire. Allura sees juniberries and grass being pulverized in her vision, so it is possible that they used every energy source available - and that would explain also why there’s a wolf that has alchemic powers in the Abyss, just like I mentioned earlier - due to the experiments they applied on everything available in their environment). 

  And then, in the stasis chambers facility, they were actually being refueled with whatever they had available, and that was the inexpensive, easily available, purple Galra Quintessence. Here are the reasons why I believe that:

  1) Because Altean energy is not purple, it is blue. Whatever would come out of their bodies would be blue. I know, I know, the Alteans in the Komar mechas exuded purple energy, but that’s because Haggar infused them with her evil magic and the corrupted Dark Entity, which she manipulated as she wished. I doubt Lotor’s Alteans were giving off purple energy.  

  2) As seen in S1E10 “Collection and Extraction”, the purple Quintessence is a refined form of fuel, obtained from yellow Quintessence. One would not directly extract purple quintessence from a living being. 

  3) We’ve been presented so many times with regeneration pods in the show… First Allura and Coran were in stasis pods, then Lance, Keith… It’s like a repeating song - regeneration pods, regeneration pods… Foreshadowing?

  4) There are no tubes coming in and out of the pod itself, just a vat on top of the pod, filled with purple Quintessence, similar to how Zarkon wore his canisters on the back of his suit.

  5) The foreshadowings from the comic do not speak about incapacitated donors, but about free-willing, dedicated, sentient beings. 

  6) Lotor says he doesn’t want to resort to the barbarism of the Komar, which was basically extracting Quintessence out of every living being without their accord. Well, if those people were indeed forcefully drained of energy in those pods, it would have been barbaric. 

  7) And in the spirit of what the Executive Producers said about Lotor, that he actually tells THE TRUTH every damn time, let’s revisit what he replies to Pidge, in S6E4, when she accuses him of being a murderer: “You know nothing about what you speak!” Sorry, I had to highlight this one. It is the ultimate truth, because he Does. Not. Lie. And to tell Pidge something like this… Pidge, who is THE SMARTEST, the most rational, the most inquisitive, the one who solves all the puzzles and mysteries, defeats her own self at chess, hacks into any Galra tech… Wow, that is the ultimate insult. Do not think for a minute that they chose Pidge randomly for this one. They could have picked Keith, Shiro, Lance, anyone else. No, the writers chose HER. Pidge, you’re an ignorant (sorry, Pidge stans), and with her, we ALL are, because she ultimately is the voice of all of us who might have believed what the story appeared to tell us. We RUSHED to conclusions. And Allura rushed to yeet him, believing Romelle. Keith jumped the gun on making judgements right away, although Shiro had taught him better, to never rush, because patience yields focus. That quote, my friends, has a very clear role in this show.

  Look again at the Alteans in the pods. Look at their bodies, their faces. Those wider lines on the skin might actually be battle scars. Because Keith and Krolia, after working with the Blades, and fighting in many battles, seem to have similar markings on their faces.   Another possibility is that those are burn scars, similar to when an electrical discharge burns through an object, because from that we have seen, the Druid and the Altean energies look like an electric arc. One thing that makes me think so is the fact that the scars are symmetrical.

  Some of them might have been energy donors for feeding the Yalexes, others - pilots.

  Pilots of what? - you might ask. 

  Of Yalexes.

  But you might say… those white-legged creatures are too small to accommodate an Altean inside. At least from how they look in the show, they’re pretty small. Maybe, but remember the Alteans are chameleonic people that can change size and color. If Allura was able to grow in size, why not shrink as well? 

  The reason why I think those Yalexes were piloted, is because the working principle for all these mechas (including Voltron, Sincline, the Komar mechas, the robeasts) is to have a pilot inside. You can’t have the Entity simply inhabit a machine - it needs a living being to operate. (That’s one good reason to believe that Lotor was not completely dead inside Sincline in S8, because that robot was moving, damn it! He was the Malocoti dragon, under the spell of the evil witch, but he was moving. Through what turn of events did he end up dead - like afterlife-dead - at the end of the show? Can someone explain it to me?).

  These Yalexes look like machines to me, honestly. Not some sort of organic or energy-based creature. Infused with Altean energy. And I bet they suck out a crap-ton of Altean energy in order to efficiently defend the Quantum Abyss. I don’t think they are unmanned. Because, again, the Camel Priest also says that they ‘die’ / ‘are being reborn’ through the Yalex, so there must be some sort of symbiosis going on there. 

  Being a Quantum Abyss defender is no easy task, in a place where all the shearing forces are tearing apart the fabric of space-time. Some of them fall into the neutron star gravity, like the ones Keith and Krolia shook off. How many of them must have been lost in the fights with the Galra?

  Returning to the pin about Ranveig’s super-weapon. Remember that creature? Oh, it’s a good-looking beast, one that Keith and Krolia were after (that’s how Keith met his mom, while on a mission to destroy the super-weapon). Here are some quotes from the show, to refresh your memory:

S5E5: “Warlord Ranveig intercepted an undocumented shipment of quintessence traveling through his territory. He took it for his own and began experimenting with it. It’s more powerful than any quintessence we’ve received from the empire, and it has some very unexpected effects.”

S6E2: Krolia: “I was with Ranveig when an unmarked cargo ship passed into his region. When we checked it out, there was no crew aboard. The ship had been nearly torn to pieces, but inside, a single vat of quintessence remained. It was unlike any other quintessence we’d seen.”

Keith: “Were there navigation records aboard?”

Krolia: “No, but I analyzed the ship personally. The radiation signature indicated it had passed through the quantum abyss.”

S8E3: Keith: “Ranveig found the creature in the Quantum Abyss and experimented on it with Lotor’s quintessence. He trained it to take out his Galra enemies, but he couldn’t control it. The beast couldn’t differentiate between adversaries and allies.”

And this is the lovely beast: 

 They never gave a name to that super-weapon creature (I wonder why), but I’m gonna call it… Narti. The reason why I call it Narti can be found here.   

  I have some reasons, as well, to believe that:

  - Narti uses mind-control by touching someone’s back of their head with her palm. The creature speaks to Keith by holding the head of a robot sentry in its hand. 

  - body similarities (as described in the linked article as well)

  - The creature is highly intelligent, understands language, is capable of operating computers and… and… wait for it… capable of ERASING MEMORIES. 

  And here lies my biggest proof, and it’s connected to the entire story about the clandestine vats of Quintessence, as I will expand below:

  My theory is that the injured Narti ended up somewhere just beyond the entrance of the Quantum Abyss (where Ranveig later found her), because Lotor most likely ordered his trusted Galra sentries to rescue her and take her to a “black site” (to mirror the title of the episode, because I believe it wasn’t only about the interrogation of Throk).

  Think of it: they were all hunted down by Zarkon. Lotor was the main target, but the other sentries were not spared of animosity. Where would be the best place to run and hide, that they knew well? Hm? Wasn’t the Quantum Abyss part of their routine routes, as they worked under Lotor? And they would be protected by the all-powerful Yalexes and by the intrinsically dangerous environment of the place. Who knew well the paths that were relatively unaffected by the space-time distortions? Yes, that’s right, Lotor’s dear Galra fellows, secret workers, the ones that show up everywhere around him when he’s at the colonies. The guys that operate the moon facilities, the unmarked cargo ships, the cruisers, the ones that also built his Sincline ships!

  The way Haggar operated on Narti and spied on Lotor was through the dark entity inside Kova (that cat, in my opinion, definitely had the entity inside; it’s been implied since when Alfor asked Honerva how old the cat was). 

  You don’t believe Kova was the actual tracker? Here’s what Acxa told the Atlas crew, in S8E5 “The Grudge”:

  “I never had a creature companion, but one of my partners, Narti, was bonded to an immortal cat named Kova. That cat gave her the ability to experience the world. […] Until Lotor killed Narti and we had to abandon the animal on our destroyed ship so we could escape without being tracked.” (You think that whole discussion about pets, among Atlas crew members, was a useless scene? I honestly completely forgot about that part, it was complete fluff. )

  But Lotor, instead of slaying Kova, went for Narti. There are several possible reasons why. Maybe because he would have released the dark entity from the cat and possibly risked infecting someone else? Or maybe he would have released a ginormous amount of energy and it would have ended up being a suicide move? Or maybe sentimental attachment to the cat? Or maybe the cat was too fast/ too small? Anyway, he got Narti. I’m sure it was a very hard decision to make, but he had to save everyone else. It was either that or continue to be tracked by Haggar. But I believe he didn’t want to let her die.

  So, while Lotor was on the run along with his remaining, frightened generals, he secretly ordered his scuttling Galra squadrons to take Narti to a “black site”, to somehow try to heal her and, maybe, interrogate her to find out how this could have happened. Maybe the wound was bad enough that it needed a desperate measure, and they resorted to the pure Quintessence they had at hand. Maybe Narti was already dead and the Entity resurrected her, just like it did with Zarkon and Honerva. We don’t know all the details, but the canon definitely tells us that the beast got indiscriminately violent after exposure to pure quintessence.

  As we know, pure quintessence causes all sorts of terrible problems, it’s basically like an overdose of meds, and, as Krolia stated, it had some unexpected results. Narti’s deepest resentment against the Galra became her ultimate obsession of killing Galra-only. We don’t know her backstory, but from what Acxa told Veronica in S8, they were all treated as pariah in the empire: “I was an outcast, born and bred in war. The only way I survived was to become worse than my enemies.” I’m sure Narti had a lot of vexation against the Galra, since she was a ‘half-breed’ as well, so turning into a beast that wanted to kill Galra-only makes total sense. It also explains why the beast totally ignored Lance and Hunk and went after Keith and Lahn.

  The one thing that solidified my belief that Narti was the one who ravaged the unmarked cargo ship (the one that had passed through the Quantum Abyss, where Krolia said she found that single vat of quintessence, and there was no crew aboard) was the fact that there were no navigation records left on it. And, again, I’m reminding everyone that in animation they don’t waste airtime. Why would they make Keith ask Krolia if there were any navigation records left? Just to waste some airtime budget? 

  What is one of Narti’s famous talents? Erasing memories!! Manipulating minds. Isn’t that why Haggar was frustrated about being incapable of probing Throk’s mind? Oh, how satisfied Lotor was! Remember his smirk? Again, that was not a pointless scene. They even made Haggar say “no one can completely wipe a memory away” while they torture Throk, just to prove that she was baffled by the situation. Yup, someone CAN, actually, wipe a memory away. And that is Narti.   Here’s Lotor enjoying himself while Haggar tortures Throk.  Narti also mind-controls the king of planet Puig, remember that?

To put a bigger stamp on my proof, here’s Pidge, in S8E3, “The Prisonner’s Dilemma”, when trying to access the ship’s file directory, while the creature was roaming freely through the corridors. Pidge says, regarding the file:  “It appears to be corrupted.” Minutes later, we see the creature operating the computer terminal with her palm fully touching the panel, (see one of previous screen-caps) interrupting Pidge’s transmission to Keith, in which she tries to warn him that there is something out there. During the fight with the creature, Pidge attempts to open some doors, only to scream seconds later: “That thing overrode my protocol!”

  The creature also had a plan of how to attract more Galra into her trap: she set up a distress beacon (yordam bering exus). She’s not dumb at all!! 

  That is Narti, my friends.

  She is basically the living PROOF of what pure Quintessence can do to someone. It literally turns you into a monster. And that was supposed to be a LEARNING POINT for the teens watching the show, that TOO MUCH of anything can make you lose your mind, your soul, your body. Parallel that to how BOTH Allura and Lotor lost their minds fighting each other, after accessing the rift, and now you get the bigger picture. There is also a bigger role that she carries in closing the arcs of Lotor’s generals, discussed in the TPL article that I linked.

  An interesting feature this creature has is the ability to move extremely fast, almost close to teleportation skills (you can still see a trail of its movement, and that is exactly what Pidge tried to figure out, when she decrypted the video footage of the monster in the aforementioned episode). And… we’re back to the Entity and its marvelous property of being extremely fast, jittery, teleportation-capable. Which convinces me now (I wasn’t sure before) that Narti actually not only got an overdose of pure Quintessence, but also a gulp of Entity. 

  Which would make sense, because the Entity is capable of resurrecting people (see Zarkon and Honerva), and if she were dead or close to death, the medics must have employed some last resort methods. It also explains why the resulting beast is so enraged.

  I believe Narti is the one who accidentally interrupted some important transports that were going into/out of the Quantum Abyss. When Keith, Romelle and Krolia arrived at the moon facility, it looked abandoned and full of dust. Which means those Galra sentries/scientists/medics that were supposed to get there, taking care of the operations, they did not make it. Those ravaged ships that Krolia found, with nobody on board… those were Narti’s doing.

  Who was hunting Galra and only Galra? Narti, the enraged girl! 

  So Lotor, under the pressure of being spied by Haggar and hunted down by Zarkon, shot himself in the foot, big time. By injuring Narti, he set in motion a chain of events that cascaded down to the biggest misunderstanding of his 10k years of life. 

  IF there had been sentries at the moon colony, to properly operate the facility, Keith, Krolia and Romelle would have found out the truth directly from them. Not by forming an impression based on their biases. 

  And I just can’t hold it back, now that I have an idea about Kosmo as well. What if he was supposed to be used as a story moral that the Entity can be a tool for good, under the right handler? Kosmo can teleport, thus he must possess the Entity. Remember, he was a puppy when he fell out of the sky and became Keith’s pet. So Keith raised him, into a GOOD boy.

  There are some plot holes that I’d like to discuss at this point.

   1 - Bandor saying “Lotor… The other colony… It’s all a lie.” 

   A lie in reference to what? 

   What we are tempted immediately to gather from Bandor’s discombobulated phrases is that Lotor lied about the other colony. Yet he does not say exactly that. He utters the beginning of three unfinished sentences. Pay attention to the punctuation. I copied it exactly as displayed in the subtitles. Near their death, people usually are incoherent and cannot finish their words. 

   Let me give you an example of how I could finish these sentences and get a completely different meaning:

   - Lotor never told us, but…

   - The other colony holds the truth.

   - It’s all a lie (here). 

   [and then Bandor gives his last breath]

   Hm? Would this be so far away from the truth? After all, the main colony did look like a big, fake Paradise, blatantly resembling the Hobbits’ Shire on Middle-earth. Even the serene soundtrack that goes with it in every episode (S6E2, S6E2, S8E2) is meant to suggest an ethereal environment. Look at the pastel color palette of the landscapes. A cloudy frame envelops the pictures. And we know from canon it was actually a simulation inside a spaceship. A simulation is, according to the dictionary, a deception. 

  And we know Lotor wanted to keep them inside this big deception, because as soon as he discovers Bandor’s crashed shuttle, he tells his men: “Clean up the wreckage. Leave no evidence this ever happened.” The reason why he keeps them in a bubble is absolutely in good will, and out of compassion for them, because the’ve been hunted by the Galra for so long. He doesn’t want them to experience the horrors and terror of their ancestors. They are too precious to him to be exposed to that again. They are his pearls, carefully hidden inside the Abyss.

   Notwithstanding, everything there was a big lie, because they were kept away from the scary world outside, and Bandor, who was born in that climate of eternal harmony, bucolic hills and never-ending joy, was shocked to learn that the world outside was cruel and extremely dangerous. And because he was too immature to understand Lotor’s profound reasons for doing this, he decided, with his last strands of energy, to fly back and warn the others, potentially spreading panic and destabilizing the community. To tell everyone that their world is in danger, that dark forces are lurking out there while they sit and do nothing. That some day, an evil witch might come and take their souls away. 

  And I invite the DotU experts here to see any similarities with the original character, for which I cannot comment since I’m not proficient in DotU.

   I’m circling back to what the EP’s have said about Lotor, that he doesn’t lie. Sure, he omits to say certain things, purposefully (Lie by omission. But is it an evil lie or out of pure intentions?). Whatever he does say is true. If I were to compare who knew more about the truth - the main colony or the second colony - I’d be more confident to say that the second colony knew much more about the truth. 

  So… it’s all a lie, huh?

   2 - Where were the unmarked shipments of pure Quintessence headed? Into the Quantum Abyss or out of it? 

  There are two schools of thought regarding this one. 

 - the pure Quintessence was coming out of the Abyss, from the second Altean colony, after being extracted from the Alteans in those purple pods. This is basically what the official canon lets us believe.That Lotor harnessed their life source for his own personal gain. And this theory was left, quietly, as the official stance, dubiously at odds with the rushed, one-phrase redemption Allura gives him at the end.  

  - the other theory (sorry I can’t find the reference link!) is that the pure Quintessence was actually headed towards the second colony, coming from the empire, more specifically from what was collected after Haggar used the Komar weapon on Voltron, in S1E13. Haggar even exclaims “It’s pure quintessence!”

  If all these looney-tooney symbols I decoded are actually a thing, with the Yalex and Haruspex and all that batshit-crazy camel spit allegory, then I’d say neither of the above two theories is completely true. If the Alteans are actually capable of purifying Quintessence, following the specs from the Druid refinery, and obtaining close to 100% purity (gosh, let’s talk Breaking Bad), then they wouldn’t need any external shipments from the empire and Lotor could easily fuel his comet ore ships with Q coming from the Abyss. Albeit, not from Alteans in stasis pods, but from a refinery. (I feel the sudden urge to give Q an atomic number and find its spot in the periodic table).   

  On the other hand, it made sense narratively to have Q coming from the Komar weapon, since Lotor is a master at stealing stuff from under his parents’ nose; otherwise, what was the point of that entire story? Just to prove how badass Haggar was? One speculative solution would be to have both sources: one in the Abyss to fuel the Yalexes and one source in the empire to fuel the comet ships, although this theory is a bit too stretched.

  —->>> Another option, more in line with a Breaking Bad scenario, would be that Lotor got his hands on some pure Q from the Komar - and - he stole the specs from Haggar’s refinery. Brought them to the scientists alchemists at the colony and said: “make me this pure Q, following these instructions”. 

  And that would explain why, in the comic, there’s already a Yalex pearl in the ceiling, because it’s the manufacturer’s ISO Quality Standard.

  It would also justify having to use the word Haruspex - not just for the pun - but because Haruspex basically means someone who inspects something and analyzes it. You could say that the pure Q of Komar is an extract from Voltron, ‘the entrails’ of Voltron.

  So, listen: they got the pure Q from the Komar, analyzed it, took the specs from Haggar’s refinery, followed the guidelines, and produced their own refined Q. For feeding Yalexes, for fueling Lotor’s comet ships, for medical purposes gone wild - like turning Narti into a monster… Eh? How does this sound? More like it? Did I write good fiction?

  At this point, the Altean alchemists can be safely called the little Walter Whites of the show, while Lotor is both Heisenberg  - the mastermind and Jesse Pinkman - the smuggler. Oh, boy, what mess did I get into?

  Quintessence can be easily compared with meth. It does make someone go crazy, doesn’t it? And it gives them sooo much energy… Just google its side effects (if you don’t already know them). Ahem… first one is - a higher libido (for further enrichment about this particular Q aspect, refer to a certain rift tag in ao3); - intense feelings of pleasure; - excessive talking; - rapid heart rate; - confusion, paranoia, agitation; - aggressive behavior / sexually aggressive behavior (I wonder how Zarkon & Haggar spent their private time); - long term depression, anxiety, paranoia; - long term difficulty of feeling any pleasure. I skipped some of them here, but you get the picture. 

  Does any of this make any sense, Jesse??…

  ~~I dunno, b!tch, I’m just here for the Q~~

  On a serious note though -  wasn’t I talking earlier about one of the morals of the story - how too much of something can be bad for you? Addiction, anyone? And it’s already been discussed in the fandom, it’s not like I’m the first one to open this subject. Honerva and Zarkon basically fell prey to substance abuse and it’s not really hard to spot the signs from their backstories. And Lotor told Allura straight to her face: “The Galra Empire is completely reliant on quintessence.” 

  (I’m still thinking about making Q an element in the periodic table. Place it somewhere after the last element, so it’d have to have an atomic number above 118. Radioactive, most likely. And, unfortunately, highly unstable. Lol. Btw, there’s no known element name that starts with Q, so there you go, we’re creating it now.)

   One more look back at the Camel Priest: it wears a red cape-skirt. Red, again. Red herring. And it talks in poetic, cryptic, elaborate figures of speech. And has a sort of an unconventional, victorian-punk outfit. Lance and Hunk poke fun at him. 

  Well who’s our closest character that sums up all of these ‘qualities’? 

  L.O.T.O.R.

******

 The next two comic books, in my opinion, are not so heavily loaded with symbolism, with a few exceptions, which I’ll briefly discuss. 

  There are some really fun moments, like Lance’s guide to romance + his best pick-up lines and Hunk’s fear of getting married. 

Hunk’s sensitivity and nurturing nature is being emphasized in a story about a monster that - we eventually learn - is very angry because she is missing her baby - hints at Honerva’s desperate attempts to find her son in a perfect reality.

  Another parallel worthy to mention comes in the form of a “wolfie” that, honestly, looks just like the White Lion (which, imo, also looks like a wolf, but that’s another story, haha).  Except this guy is blue, but he does talk about being a warden of some sacred grounds, and he fights with the only paladin that is a half-galra, Keith. According to this creature, “only the chosen may enter the sacred hunting grounds.” This foreshadows Lotor’s battle with the White Lion at Oriande, and his struggle to become “chosen”, according to Altean standards. 

  Eventually, the wolfie is defeated by Coran, who is sick with the Nomo virus (parallel with the Entity). By coughing into the beast’s mouth, he releases “millions, billions, trillions” of “aggressive little creatures”. Coran flying a kotka dragon is just so in character, by the way. 

The third and last comics volume brings some interesting references to the leitmotif of the showman, and the idea that TV can manipulate people’s minds, clearly stated by Coran and Allura, after being guests in a green alien’s TV show:

Yup, these are from the official VLD comic, I kid you not. Recognize the leitmotif of the green guy - the showman? Look for him in S7E4 “The Feud” as well. Why green, you’d say? It’s the unofficial color of money, at least this ~$$$~ kind of currency )

  Lotor also states the same thing, first episode we meet him on screen, in S3E1: “The masses are easily manipulated.”  After pulling so much meta out of these innocent, lovable comics, I believe this was meant intentionally, as a direct message to us, to not trust everything that we’ll see. Example: If Bandor says “Lotor… It’s all a lie”, that doesn’t necessarily mean that Lotor lies. "That guy with the stupid show? He doesn't speak for everyone." The green guy (symbol of the TV and media deceivers) doesn’t speak for everyone. Which means there are people who will get the real message of the show, despite all the censorship. 

So here’s a quick recap of the most important symbols. These were all deduced after noticing various leitmotifs spread throughout the series.

  Lotor is:

  -Dakin; the Coranic dragon.

  -Queen Luxia.

  -The green Guardian monster.

  -The red dragon; Princess Malocoti. 

  -The red-caped Camel Priest. 

  The Alteans with alchemic powers (the martyrs) are:

  -The villagers turned into stone.

  -Florona and other sacrificial mermaids.

  -A select number of ant-looking aliens who were offered as sacrifice to the green monster

  -The camels who willingly give themselves to the rebirth through the Yalex

  The Entity is:

  -(skipped in Monsters and Mana, only mentioned by Coran as “wait to see who Dakin was working for)

  -The underwater dragon / the mind-swishing aquatic food

  -The brain-worm

  -The Abomination

  -The mushrooms

  -The Yalex monster

  Anyone who becomes One with the entity: Honerva, Lotor, Zarkon, the possessed Alteans, even Allura. Remember, the Entity can be good, or bad, depending on who uses it. 

  As you noticed, everything I’ve analyzed has been collected and put together from all throughout VLD, including the comics. I actually stated this in the beginning, too: “the recurring themes are there, scrambled in no apparent order.” And look at what the EP’s have said in a Syfy interview: 

LM: We’ve chosen to kind of selectively release little bits about our villains, like - along the way. We didn’t really have one episode where you expose everything there is to know. A lot of it is kind of underlying, for people to kind of - if they’re willing to look for it - they’ll find it. […]

JDS: I think that - in our minds, and in the writers’ room - you know, there’s a full, fleshed-out backstory that goes back to… who-knows-when. Um, yeah, it’s all there, it’s all a matter of…, the viewers are gonna, like, find it, and… [motioning his fingers to suggest keyboard typing]

Interviewer: …sift through it.

JDS: Yeah.

  Are you still there? Just a little bit left. One more sip of coffee.

  At this final point, I’d like to recap Lotor’s arc, from his inception to what was supposed to be his redemption. 

  So he’s born from two parents who were ‘dead inside’, high on Quintessence and infected with the Entity. He himself has the Entity and (most likely) learns how to deal with it from a young age, or his body naturally creates a symbiotic relationship with it (as opposed to the parasitic relation it has with Honerva and Zarkon’s bodies).   He grows up basically raised by another mother, Dayak. He tries to get close to his father, but he constantly gets pushed away, marginalized, because he has “impurities”.

  His inquisitive spirit starts digging up the truth about Altea. He starts to track down the survivors and establishes a secret colony for them in the Quantum Abyss. 

  After Zarkon destroys the planet where he worked along the denizens, he finds refuge in researching his Altean heritage, its ancient history and traditions.The colony he’d secretly established in the Quantum Abyss is thriving.

  Somewhere along the many millennia of his life, due to constant harassment from Haggar, who lurks around him at every corner, he decides to step up the Colony protection. He realizes that nothing can keep the witch at bay, except something equally powerful: the Entity itself.  Haggar has been, for millennia, quite frustrated that she couldn’t control his mind the same way she influenced Zarkon, through the Entity. (Remember, Lotor tells Zarkon this “You’ve become nothing more than one of the witch’s monsters. Does she control you as well?”)   It never worked with Lotor - as we find out, when she remembers Lotor is her son, in S5E2. In her vision, she sees him first as a child, then adolescent, then adult, with glowing eyes, just like her. The adolescent Lotor turns and runs away from her, and she can’t keep up with him - a clear hint at the fact that he managed to escape her spells.

  The second colony is established. He tells them the truth about the dangers they face, how Haggar and Zarkon conquer world after world using the Entity, and if they don’t do something, their society would also be on the line. The Alteans are fully on board with his plans, they establish a military base and a research facility to study the Entity and the Quintessence. They most likely run into numerous failed attempts to figure out how to create a defense system against Haggar. Probably many Alteans perish during experiments. Martyrs. Quite a different word than “killed”, as stated by Romelle, or “murdered”, as in Pidge.  

  Lotor continues his archeology research around the Universe, discovering scattered information about Voltron, King Alfor, alchemy, Oriande. He tries to put it all together, to figure out the secrets of Voltron. That’s why he says he gave all he had to plumb the depths of King Alfor’s knowledge. He most likely needs that, desperately, to defend the Colony.

  Knowing historical facts about the existence of a rift, he develops his own political convictions and agenda, about bringing unlimited Quintessence to the Universe, in order to stop the Galra madness. He believes that by feeding that monster that is lurking in the dark corners of the Universe, and by making Q a cheap fuel for the Empire, the greed for it will vanish and peace will be restored again - “a complete paradigm shift, a new dawn for the old empire.” Maybe somewhere in the back of his mind, he is rooting for an Altean ruling, somewhere in the future, through the power of rift Quintessence fueling his unbeatable weapons (The blown out of proportions version of this dream is seen when he loses his mind at the rift battle: “Once I wipe out Voltron, I’m going to start a new Altea. An Altea that will never know of Princess Allura or King Alfor.”)

  When Voltron gets drained of energy from the Komar, Lotor makes his first contact with the real deal: pure Quintessence. He’d never seen anything like that before. Only Haggar and Zarkon knew about it, because they’d been in the rift. 

  He manages to get his hands on some pure Quintessence and steals (or he’d already stolen) Haggar’s specs for Quintessence purification, and begins creating his own pure Q in the second colony. It is used to feed Entity-possessed Alteans piloting Yalexes. The white mechs are not made out of a comet ore, so they suck a lot of energy from the alchemists. It is also, possibly, used to carry out his experiments at the Rift, as discussed below.

  Though not established well in time, somewhere recently probably, he also starts the construction of the Rift Gate (most likely with undercover Altean workforce, due to its blue glow and juniberry-shaped entrance). He might need a lot of pure Quintessence for the construction. He hides it in that underwater, very old Galra station, where Kolivan and Keith first discover its existence. Lotor wants to go into the rift to get pure Quintessence. Much easier than having to exhaust Altean alchemists to purify it from raw materials. 

  Haggar continues to harass him and stalk him. Galra generals that rule over the territories surrounding the Quantum Abyss try sending probes in there. The Yalexes effectively defend against intruders.

  And then he figures out that Voltron was made out of a comet ore. He discovers one comet stuck between realities, he attempts to retrieve it, but fails miserably (as stated by Ezor, who recalls how unhappy his pilots were). Eventually, he uses Voltron to get it, which adds up to the already established mistrust.

  He’s now almost 100% positive that by infusing his comet ships with pure Quintessence, he’ll be able to pierce the reality barrier. “According to his calculations”, they should be successful. 

  Zarkon and Honerva figure out he’s got his hands on a trans-reality comet and start hunting him. Left without his main cruiser, having to kill one of his generals, he attempts his masterful plan, of entering the rift. He fails lamentably, realizing he’s missing a piece of information.  The generals betray him, but he escapes; he gets chased by Zarkon through solar flares, he escapes him too; then jumps right in the middle of the action to save the Paladins and the Coalition at Naxzela.

  After being a prisoner for a while in Allura’s castle, feeding them intel to gain their trust, he finally makes a breakthrough, by killing Zarkon and lighting the flame at Kral Zera. He becomes the Emperor and things are good for him for a while.  Together with Allura, he makes revolutionary discoveries; they visit Oriande and Allura helps him by infusing his ships with Quintessence, the right way, as she learned from Oriande. During this time spent together with her, something unexpected happens to him. He falls in love.   And then the painful part of the Voltron story unfolds. Romelle shows up and things go sideways completely.   Even though the mind-controlled Shiro clone delivers him to Haggar, she still has no power over him. While she basically tries to excuse herself for not being a good mother, he completely rejects her - a big blow in her newly-awakened motherly instincts. 

  Returning to the rift to try to talk to Allura, he finds her in a deep state of rage against him (most likely fueled by the big dose of Q received in the rift). There is basically no way to reason with her, although he tries. He really does. He even orders his generals to hold their fire. Acxa is worried about him. Most likely because she figured out that he’s in love with her, and she sees that as his weak spot.   The spark that lights up the evil flame of the Entity inside him is Allura’s spiteful, unreasoned comparison with Zarkon. The one thing he hated most, his weakest spot - being compared to his father - coming from the lips of the woman he loves. That completely ruins him inside. He ends up exactly as the Malocoti dragon. He loses his reason as well, uttering threats about a new Altea that will never know about Princess Allura and King Alfor.  And then he loses the battle in the rift, and remains trapped there until Honerva pulls him out.

 And this is where S8 left us with lots of question marks. What we got is basically nothing. We only see a suggestion of a melted corpse (but with motes of Quintessence coming out of his body). And then, a quick redemption sentence from Allura and a bitter “he deserved better” from his mother.

  But the comics tell us something else. The first comic book was released in 2016, just at the beginning of the show. And that was the map, the Rosetta Stone of Voltron.

  The comics tell us that Lotor was saved from the spell of the witch. 

  This is what I think really happened:   Honerva pulls him from the rift. At this point, his body is pretty much done for, but I assume his consciousness is trapped inside the Sincline (in a similar fashion to how Shiro’s mind was trapped inside the Black Lion). Honerva knows a trick or two of how to ‘resurrect' people, and she infuses him with high doses of her evil Entity powers and with Quintessence (that’s why we see motes of purple Quintessence coming out of his body). He’s become a full vampire robeast.   Being basically “dead inside”, the high-on-Q, full-vampire Lotor behaves extremely violent, killing indiscriminately everyone around him (foreshadowed by the Narti monster, who cannot distinguish enemies from allies). The only thing that seemed to make the Sincline pause and not shoot was… Allura -oops. Otherwise, he is Honerva’s puppet, just like the Malocoti dragon.

  Allura has a vision where she sees Lotor explaining what the Entity is, and that she should become One with it in order to defeat Honerva. We don’t know exactly who encouraged that Entity to come visit her. It might be the Entity itself, or it might be Lotor’s own telepathic work, channeled through the mycelial network of Entities - the final station being the Entity trapped inside that vacuum tube. We don’t know for sure. All we know is that it seems to be a force for good.

  Eventually giving in and taking the Entity inside herself,  Allura travels through Honerva’s mind along with her friends and they free the Old Paladins. After exiting Honerva’s mind, the Paladins wake up, except Allura, who is fallen into some sort of deep sleep or coma. This trip is something she needs to see through on her own. 

  There are missing parts here, as I analyzed in this meta. I believe one full episode just for this adventure.

  Allura travels out of Honerva’s mind, guided by the Entity, and she arrives inside the Sincline’s memory space, where she meets Lotor’s consciousness. The Old Paladins might be with her as well (because Lotor needs to reconcile with his father, too). There are two possibilities here: either Lotor is already a peaceful ghost (like Shiro), who will reveal to her, in a nice conversation, the whole truth about the Alteans, Honerva, bla-bla. Or… Lotor’s ghost is as dark and violent as the Old Paladins were, because Honerva’s spell reaches even inside Sincline’s memory space. This would make the encounter more dramatic, probably a fight with him ensues, the Old Paladins help Allura restrain him, and eventually she releases him from the spell. The whole nine yards. And then he tells his side of the story, makes peace with his father, the Old Paladins say their farewell, and Allura is left to decide with him the next steps.

  After waking up, she has a discussion with Lance, who finally understands Allura’s heart belongs somewhere else. A mature Lance vows to help her retrieve Lotor from Honerva.

  There are some episodes that are completely missing, but I believe they would mirror the story of Princess Malocoti being freed from the ‘dragon’ (Sincline). Allura would retrieve his soul from the mecha and put it back inside his body, just like she did with Shiro. She would resurrect his body the Altean way, not Honerva’s pitiful way. Like the old oak tree that blooms again, bursting with Quintessence under Lance’s eyes, we would see Lotor’s shriveled body regain its beauty and vitality. And Lance might be there to witness it. 

 Following the leads from the now famous article Seek Truth in Darkness by @leakinghate, it’s clear that the last few episodes edited Lotor out. He is there, helping the Paladins defeat Honerva. There are now seven Paladins, just as Kolivan predicted in his weird ‘interview’ in S8E7 (which totally looks like wasted airtime if you don’t understand the symbolism).   The bringing back to life of all realities comes in the form of a juniberry flower - three petals - three almighty powers: Honerva, Allura and Lotor. He did say that “all life began with a single juniberry flower”, in case anyone wondered why he spoke again in looney-tooney ‘cave poetry’.   It wasn’t just Allura and Honerva.   Lotor was there as well, because, as Leakinghate mentioned, this is his path to understanding his Altean side, which is Sacrifice (martyrdom, if we want to be more specific), the path to passing the Oriande trials. 

  If the martyred villagers were turned into stone, the saviors that sacrificed themselves also get their own stone statues. We get to see Allura’s, but Lotor had a statue as well, in the colony, and it might find its final spot either on Altea, or on Daibazaal, we don’t know. We might see one for Honerva, as well.   The Great Restoration of all realities is accomplished by a flipped-gender Trinity, challenging stereotypes: The Mother, The Daughter and The Son (just like the princess saving the prince is a flipped script). They most likely become higher beings in an upper plane, guiding, watching over, and probably, also making contact with the mortals, from time to time. This kind of story with the ascension of the main character into the skies, into a higher dimension is not uncommon, actually, in the classic Japanese animated series from the 80’s, and it would be the Grande Finale’s nod to that tradition. 

  You see, my friends, there are so many threads that were left loose in this show. They were meant to close into beautiful arcs, monumental teaching points for children, teens and adults as well. The writers and EP’s intended to finish these arcs. But… “this is show business”, no matter what the “right thing to do” is. 

  This analysis is based on comparisons, symbolic interpretation, semantics and speculations. As I stated in the beginning, I might have gotten some things wrong, but overall, I believe this is what we should have seen.

  If some of these might prove incorrect at a later date, I always welcome improvements. 

 Thank you to all the good people of the Lotura Discord, who constantly inspire me through thought-provoking discussions and awesome sources of knowledge!

 To conclude my very, very long peroration, I believe Lotor is the type of character that stands right on the edge of black and white, good and evil. He lives on the Razor’s Edge, just like the episode title suggests (a Sanskrit concept that passing over a sharp edge is difficult, thus the path to salvation is hard). He wants nothing but to be the good leader his parents never were, yet his environment and upbringing constantly try to push him off the edge. Like an acrobat that walks on a tightrope, he needs to make it to the other side. 

  Did he ever make it? 

#lotor #voltron #lotor deserved better #vld meta #vld comics meta #lotura

[hamsamwich23]

Snowed in (Unreality au one shot)

Words: 1,288

⚠️⚠️⚠️Content and trigger warnings include the following:  Implied s/h, implied gore and violence, depressive thoughts.⚠️⚠️⚠️

This is my part of a trade i’m doing with: @phantom-of-the-ruckus !!! they requested something with Twenty and Scout and I chose to destroy them with hurt/comfort. I apologize if it sounds a bit rushed, my head has been killing me all day smh 

Oc mentioned: Kai belongs too @/the-new-kiddo-on-the-block :]

PRO//SHIPPERS AND PEOPLE WHO SEXUALIZE/ROMANTICIZE/GLORIFY THESE TOPICS WILL BE BLOCKED IF FOUND INTERACTING!! WEIRD COMMENTS ABOUT THESE TWO CHARACTERS WILL BE REPORTED AND BLOCKED!! THEY ARE BOTH MINORS!!

Anyways, enjoy my writing! I will now crawl into a void for the rest of the month/j

“So…you guys don’t celebrate Christmas, huh?”

“No..well, not really. We don’t celebrate Christmas but we DO celebrate new years by giving each other gifts and celebrating. It’s like a party that we throw once a year for ourselves”

 “I see.” 

It was past midnight. Twenty and Scout were currently in Twenty’s room, sitting on the bed with his blanket wrapped around the two of them. The bedroom as well as outside was completely pitch black, however, they could still clearly see the heavy snow outside that was falling at a fast rate. Everything outside was already covered with a thick blanket of snow. And with the way it was going it probably wouldn’t be stopping anytime soon. 

“Why do they wait til new years?”

“It’s because the holidays are kinda….hard for them. They had issues with celebrating their birthday before, And I guess Christmas just..takes a lot out of them. I guess new years just works better for them? In a way. To them it’s a way to celebrate being alive without Owen controlling them..They have a party held all night, it’s pretty neat”

“That sounds cool, actually…I wonder if they would let me and Kai come over and join…I mean, if you all were okay with it of course.” “yeah, I don’t think they’d mind much. I mean….they told me I could celebrate Christmas with you guys if I wanted too, so there’s that” “epic”

Scout nodded, letting out a sigh as he leaned on Twenty, holding onto the blanket. “Riley’s gonna be joining us this time..I’m not sure how to feel about it…I mean, we’re getting along, which is good, she’s trying to be an actual parent to me, I just…I dunno. It’s complicated. It feels complicated”

“And that’s okay, you’re allowed to feel that way Scout, especially considering…everything that happened.” “Yeah…She finally apologized for everything, she’s…she’s trying, and it’s been better with her..I just have…mixed feelings about. Everything, y’know?” “I understand, Scout..I’m sure it’ll be okay. Just try to relax alright? It’s okay to feel this way about her. I’m happy you guys are improving though” 

“Yeah, it’s definitely been nicer..Riley even said she might take me somewhere for my birthday this year…hopefully she’ll still want too after I tell her I almost crashed the car..the tire’s still gotta be replaced before I go back home”

“I’m sure she will, it wasn’t your fault, the roads were really icy when you got out of work right? Just tell her what happened.”

“You’re right. She’s a bit of a bitch sometimes but she’ll understand”

“Kai and I can Replace the tire tomorrow, that way you won’t have anything to worry about”

“I mean, I’m not too worried. That car lasted longer than the WAREHOUSE did, I’m convinced that somehow it’s invincible”

“I’m surprised they havent gotten a new van, honestly”

“They were talking about it the other day, so maybe…”

Scout laid herself down on the bed and looked back outside the window “I know the car can be fixed…it’s not…really the car I’m worried about right now, or even Riley”

“Hmmm…”

Twenty carefully laid down beside him, covering them both with the warm blanket. “Are you okay, Scout?”

“...eh, no not really. I’m….worried…I, am always worried about something, but right now it’s…”

Twenty reached over and gently squeezed her plush hand. “What’s on your mind Scout?”

“...it’s gonna be my birthday in a few days, and I’ll be seventeen…then in ANOTHER year i’ll be eighteen. I’ll be a legal adult…by the hosts standards in this Country, but still…it doesn’t…feel right”

“Hmmmm…are you worried about being an adult?” “mmm, yes and no. I just…feel off. Nothing is going to change that much and I know that. No matter what I’m still going to be me...And I’m excited to actually be able to do more….I-I just..”

He shuddered and looked down at his arms. Normally he kept bandages on, at all times. Including at night, or when he would sleep. But right now having them off would be just fine. The injuries on his arm were healing. There were many scars and marks all over..a majority of them were old. There were some that were even giving off a faint purple glow…he hadn’t lost either of his arms since he was thirteen after…an incident with a host, so there were quite a lot. Most of them were caused by him repressing and hiding the fact that he had dark magic. The effects of hiding it were painful and took a heavy toll on him. When he stopped repressing it though, it stopped hurting as much. And her arms had begun to heal. Whether they were caused by the side effects of that magic…or…other reasons.

“..I’ve been through a lot. We all have. And I just….I didn’t think I’d make it this far, Twenty…I didn’t think I’d still be alive by now”

“...Scout…”

Scout didn’t say anything. He just rolled over to face Twenty, who held his arms out for the stuffed creature. Scout quickly accepted and leaned right into him. Burying his face into Twenty’s chest as Twenty wrapped his arms around Scout, holding her in a firm hug. 

“I’m here for you okay? We all are…your family, me, Kai…we’ll help you get through this”

Scout sniffled, hugging Twenty and nodding his head. “Thank you..”

“No need to thank me…will you be okay?”

“y-yeah..I’ll be okay..”

“Is there anything I can do for you at this moment”

“I’m tired..I just wanna rest right now..”

“We can definitely do that. It’s late anyways and I’m sure even by now Kai is asleep.”

Scout nodded, yawning softly and leaning into Twenty. “Mmmmm…is it still snowing outside?” “Yeah, it’s really coming down right now…I don’t know if you’ll be able to drive home tomorrow either” “Dammit…I’ll just call Riley in the morning..tell her I’m staying with you until it’s safe to drive home… How deep is the snow gonna be?” “not sure, but it’s probably going to end but being….at least knee high?” “huh…if it weren’t midnight right now, I’d go jump in it”

“Hah! Scout that sounds C O L D. You’d end up freezing!”

“Maybe….it would be worth it though”

Twenty chuckled, kissing the top of Scout’s head “you’re silly. You can mess around in the snow tomorrow if you want, after we fix the car. I can make us all something to eat afterwards, if you want to help with that too”

“You’re so sweet..” Scout whispered, resting his head on Twenty’s shoulder. You’re the coolest guy I’ve ever met…being with you…really helps me, a lot..thank you, Twenty”

“I’m happy to be here with you, and be here for you”

Scout’s tail wagged softly as he kissed Twenty’s cheek before rolling over and closing his eyes. “I’m gonna try to sleep now…g’night Twenty, I love ya”

“I love you too,” Twenty replied softly, keeping his arms around Scout. He felt Scout hug onto one of his arms. 

He sighed as he rested his head down against Scout’s back. Closing his eyes and pulling Scout closer, as Scout began snoring softly.

Before Scout slept each night he would let his moth wings free. They were retractable, much like his second pair of arms. Normally Twenty didn’t care at all. They had been very soft and comfortable to rest against…Scout enjoyed having them, he loved flying with them and he loved showing off tricks he learned to Twenty…

But now, he couldn’t help but think he could have done more to prevent  the painful sight of Scout’s moth wings…

Or rather, what little remained of the poor wings.

#hello puppets #unreality au #hello puppets midnightshow #hello puppets au #hello puppets unreality au #sams writing #my writing #twentyxscout #unreality scout #unreality twenty #DO NOT TAG AS IZ!!!!

[zhongrin]

Hi, just checking in to commence this week's vibe check!

Please send help Kazuha is dealing with a not so happy adeptus

VIBE CHECK—!

How are you doing this week? are you actually being gaslit by Dorian? Are you taking care of yourself and your basic needs? Are you even trying to investigate why you're getting blank asks?

If you are doing well, that's great! I'll send you good vibes if Xiao permits me because he's knocked Kazuha out oh my God to boost it! If not, I'll send it anyways to help your vibes get better!

... hold on, something's going on in the backgrou— Xiao? mMMPH—

...

Is this Rin? I hope it is.

Don't mind 🌸🍒. They're dealing with a few... Things. Something happened with [Redacted] so I told them to help him out. He's not doing well right now after trying to reach out to you.

... you seem fine, so I don't see the point in them doing this check. Hmph. Once you're done with your trip there, head back to the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor.

Someone is waiting for you there.

— Xiao

[clarification from 🌸🍒: if you're wondering if I'm in danger or this is serious... I'm not www, hope you have a good week Rin! Just think of this as a little re-enactment of sorts :) I like stirring up drama, ehe! ♪ gotta live up to my chaotic nature after all!

... okay that's all HAOSBSKSJ anyways I shall hide now before I do end up getting suplexed oops ]

i am doing fine! this week has been eventful so far :)

i keep seeing 'dorian' everywhere and so i asked bedo about it... he said he'd rather not talk about it and he seems a little upset, so i'm not going to pursue the topic further!! he'll talk when he's ready, i'm sure <3

and yes ofc, i had my water and food and i am just chilling while sipping on some tea. i have to say chamomile is super calming and it's such a pretty yellow...

and nah, i think the blank asks are just glitches since everyone's experiencing it. it'll resolve itself soon enough. i'll give it like, idk, a week or so.

i hope you're doing well too sweetie!! remember to take care of yourself and uh. i hope kazuha is okay-

oh hello xiao?? *squints* i- hmmm.... i'm so sorry to say this xiao but your handwriting... i can't seem to read them. i can only make out a few words... 'something'..... 'reach out'...? *squints harder* 'funeral parlor'.... huh??? did... did someone pass away?? oh no. my condolences ;((

i hope you're okay in these trying times. my heart goes out to you. i would be so heartbroken if i had to lose my loved ones.... oh dear. i can't imagine living without albedo, that would be so heartbreaking. i don't think i can take it ;(((

#astronetwrk ebg #rin answers #🌸🍒 anon #rin is having tea with: anon 💟 #rin plays ebg #rin selfships #meibedo #no no youre good dw i love these kinda asks <33333

[knuckleslove]

I feel like we've already talked about several of these topics, but what about: ✨ 🎶 🌞 ❌

✨ Give you and your writing a compliment. Go on now. You know you deserve it. 😉

Hmm… I am good at writing emotionally raw scenes. Scenes that make people feel, and cry because they don’t hold anything back. But also the soft kind where it’s just wholesome and earnest.

Been reading through my final chapters & epilogue for FF today. I actually made myself cry reading a bunch of those scenes.

🎶 Do you listen to music while you write? What song have you been playing on loop lately?

Occasionally I’ll listen to calming background music or instrumental soundtracks. I can’t really write and listen to music with lyrics at the same time. It’s more than my brain can focus on. Different story if I’m drawing. Then I can listen to anything. I just can’t do words from 2 sources at the same time.

Been listening to this handful of songs on repeat lately. (Yes yes I know. A Sonic playlist. It’s a bit one note of me. What can I say. I like what I like.)

🌞 Do you have a preferred time of day to write?

I prefer to write in the morning, but that is rarely an option. What actually happens is that I write on my phone in spare moments, and at night after everyone else goes to bed if I can manage to stay awake.

❌ What's a trope you will never write?

Ooooh. Hmmm. IDK. Just selecting out of tropes that are widely popular… Omegaverse? No disrespect to anyone who’s into that. It’s just not my thing.

Hey @speedy-1236 - I’ll rehash topics with you any day. Love you 😘

#ask game #ask games #writer ask game #sonic friends

[mimisempai]

The President and the Clerk - 5

Chapter Summary:

Prez goes shopping, Casey comes out of his fishbowl and Loki plays matchmaker

On AO3

Casey had just finished mixing the pancake batter and was heating a small knob of butter in the pan.

Even though it was the weekend, he was up early, but that didn't stop him from indulging in pancakes like he did every Saturday, because he liked to treat himself from time to time.

His gaze slid towards the room from which there was still no sound. Like the day before when he had woken up, he had been able to see that Prez was sleeping soundly.

As he poured the first ladle of batter into the pan, he thought back to the discussion he had had with Loki when they had picked up the trays in the cafeteria the day before.

"Loki, why is it that when I told you that Prez was sound asleep you said that it was interesting?" 

Loki smiled and replied, "You should know that we Loki cannot sleep in the company of people we don't trust."  

"You mean...?" 

Loki nodded. 

However Casey couldn't help but retort, "Yeah, but you and he keep denying that you're similar, so maybe that doesn't mean anything to him." 

Loki smiled at him again, "Trust me Cas, when it comes to survival instincts we are all the same. Prez trusts you, I am sure of it. And don't look at me like that, after all you were quick to earn my trust, my friend." 

Even now, he found it still hard to believe that this was true. But he could see with his own eyes that even when he had moved and gotten up this morning,  Prez had not moved an inch. Could it be that he really was worthy of the god's trust?

He was brought out of his reverie by the object of his thoughts coming into the kitchen. He flipped a pancake and turned to the counter where Prez had just sat.

Still in his pajamas, this time, fortunately for Casey's peace of mind, he had put on a t-shirt. Which didn't stop him from finding Prez adorable with his hair still in disarray and his sleepy look when he greeted him.

"Morning Casey." 

"Good morning,Prez."

Prez inhaled through his nose, "It smells amazing. It's actually what brought me here. What do you cook?"

Casey started another pancake, then explained, "Pancakes. It's one of the few pleasures I allow myself on my days off and since making it for two isn't more work, you'll get some too." 

Casey winked at him before flipping the pancake.

When his gaze fell on Prez again, he saw him wince and hold his bandaged wrist. Hurriedly, Casey  put the glass of water and the pill he had prepared in front of the god.

Prez smiled with gratitude before swallowing the pill and glass of water.

Casey finished preparing the pancakes then slid three onto Prez's plate in front of him and three for himself. 

He asked, "Coffee?"

Prez nodded again. Casey served them each a cup, put the rest of the pancakes in the middle of the counter before sitting down.

As he sipped his coffee, he watched over his cup as Prez tasted the first bite.

"Hmmm." hummed Prez before continuing with his mouth full, "This is delightful." Casey watched with pleasure and a little pride as he tasted the next bite and said softly, "Glad you like it."

"It's terrible, you're going to make me addicted. I'll never want to leave."

Casey ignored the pang his heart made but couldn't help but think, then don't leave. 

He forced himself to think about something else and changed the topic, "So, do you have plans for today yet?"

"I was wondering where and how I could get some clothes."

"Well I get my clothes in the commercial wing of the TVA, but I think Loki is going somewhere else. If you want, after breakfast, we can call him and ask."

Prez nodded enthusiastically, "Loki's clothes fit and he doesn't have too bad taste, but I'd like to have something of my own."

He swallowed another bite and paused, "But wait, how am I going to do that, I really have no money. I can't buy anything."

Casey exclaimed, "Didn't Loki and Mobius tell you? The TVA is offering a compensation payment to all the people they wronged."

With his mouth full, Prez smiled and once he had swallowed, he stated, "Wow Casey, if you want to put me in a good mood it's successful. But now I'm also scared."

Casey chuckled, "And of what?"

"Life has proven to me that whenever I am enjoying something, it doesn't last."

Casey could feel the hurt in Prez's voice and said softly, "Well we'll try to make it last this time, ok?" 

Then he added in a lighter tone, "And it's beginning now, here a fourth pancake." and put one on his plate.

As he copiously drizzled syrup over his pancake, Prez replied in a lighter tone as well, "I may be prince of Asgard and Jotunheim, but you are the prince of the TVA, dear Casey."

Casey chuckled into his coffee, "That's the first time anyone has ever called me a prince!" 

Prez looked at him intensely, "Then I'm glad I was the first one to notice."

Casey was glad he had the cup in front of his face so he could hide the blush on his cheeks.

They finished their breakfast in the same spirit, joking slightly. Then Prez cleaned up and put the dishes in the dishwasher. It had only been two days, but the scene gave Casey a sense of domesticity and routine that made him feel warm and fuzzy, and at the same time dread the day he would have to return to his loneliness.

Once again putting these melancholic thoughts aside, he picked up his phone and typed a message.

Hey Loki !

Prez would like to buy some

clothes. Where are you 

buying yours?

C.

Sent 9:00 a.m.

Hi Cas!

I'm going to the New-York 

of Earth-1108.

L.

Received 9:03 am

Thank you for the information.

C.

Sent 9:04 am

Do you want me to 

to go with him?

L.

Received 9:03 am

It would be really

nice of you.

C.

Sent 9:05 a.m.

I accept but with

one condition.

😏

L.

Received 9:03 a.m.

Dreading the worst, Casey nevertheless replied.

Which one?

C.

Sent 9:04 am

That you come 

with us.

L.

Received 9:03 am

Casey threw his temphone on the couch and began to rant, "What a bastard! God of mischief, my ass!"

Prez watched him with a puzzled expression. Casey dropped onto the couch and put his head in his hands. He felt Prez sit down next to him and the god asked, "Hey what's wrong?"

Casey stood up abruptly and, walking up and down, he explained, "It's just that Mister Loki, god of mischief and bullshit, is willing to go with you to earth-1108, where he usually buys his clothes, on the condition that I come with you, even though he knows full well that I-"

He returned to sit next to Prez on the couch and tried to calm down.

Prez, still a little confused, asked, "He knows full well that you what?"

Casey figured if he was going to look pathetic he might as well go all out, so he sighed, "I'm scared to death of getting out of the TVA."

When only silence answered him, he got angry, "Go ahead and laugh. Poor little Casey who knows nothing about life."

He buried his head in his hands, not wanting to see the disappointment on the face of the god.

He felt a hand on his shoulder and Prez's voice saying softly, "Casey, please look at me."

Casey shook his head.

Prez insisted, squeezing his shoulder, "Please."

Casey sighed and lifted his head, turning his eyes to Prez reluctantly.

When he met his gaze, he was surprised to find only compassion and understanding, no disgust, no disappointment, not even a trace of mockery.

He swallowed, unable to say anything.

Prez said softly, "It's just clothes, I don't need to be a fashion victim and at worst I have magic. A few clothes aren't worth the price of your fear."

"But..." 

Casey felt ashamed, depriving Prez of something just because of his angst but Prez stopped him by shaking his head and pulled out his temphone.

He wrote a message.

We will not go.

Thank you for your "help".

P.

Sent 9:20 am

What?

Why?

L.

Received 9:21 am

How can you call yourself 

his friend and want 

manipulate him into 

doing something 

that scares him so much?

Idiot!

P.

Sent 9:23 am

Casey's phone vibrated almost immediately after Prez sent his message to Loki. It was a call from Loki, Casey picked up. His friend did not wait to speak.

-Cas, I'm really sorry for my tasteless joke.. 

Of course I'll go with him. I didn't realize you took me seriously. 

I... I would never do that to you. I swear to you. Tell me you forgive me! 

Casey was silent for a moment, relieved both that Loki had agreed to go with Prez and that he hadn't ruined the moment for him, and also relieved that Loki hadn't had any devious intentions. 

-Casey? 

-Yes Loki, I'm here. I really thought this was a way for you to force me to overcome my fears.

-Casey, I swear it wasn't. It was a little dig, yes, to tempt you perhaps, but I realize it was really stupid of me. 

Will you forgive the idiot god of mischief that I am and who is still learning? 

Casey chuckled at Loki's description of himself and then replied.

-I'll forgive you in exchange for a week's worth of coffee in the cafeteria.

-A month if you want! But seriously Cas, I'm sorry.  

-It's okay Loki.

-Okay, so tell Prez I'll be there in half an hour. 

-Thanks for doing this for him.

-You're welcome. But you know, he's very protective of you, my little Cas. 

-Goodbye, Loki

Casey hung up without waiting for Loki's reaction and turned to Prez. 

"Loki is coming to pick you up in half an hour. It's all arranged."

Prea nodded, "Good for you, but Casey what I told you, I really meant it."

Casey smiled and replied, "I know and thanks for that."

They sat there for a few seconds looking at each other in silence, then Prez stood up suddenly, "Well I'm going to get ready before he gets here."

Casey nodded and followed him with his eyes.

He sighed and went to make himself a cup of coffee, not thrilled at the idea of spending part of the day alone.

He muttered to himself, "It's your fault. You're too much of a coward to set foot outside the TVA. You only have yourself to blame."

"Then get out of your fishbowl and see some of the world." 

"See some of the world? Look at me Loki, I'm just a pen pusher, I'm nothing like you heroes who get to save the universe or the multiverse for what I know." 

His recent conversation with Loki came back to him.

That's right, he was just a paper pusher.

The one that doesn't stand out.

The fish that didn't have an aquarium, just a little fishbowl in which he turned in circles and of which he knew every nook and cranny, every little stone.

He was interrupted in his reflections when two knocks were heard at the door.

"Come in!"

Loki entered and came with big steps towards him and took Casey in his arms without warning.

Wow ! Two hugs from Loki in less than 24 hours, Cas wasn't going to recover.

Loki released him and said sheepishly, "I'm so sorry."

Casey shook his head and patted his arm, "I assure you, it's all good."

Loki scrutinized him for a few seconds and seemingly satisfied with what he saw, he nodded.

Then he called, "Prez, let's go!"

"I'm here." came a voice from behind Casey who turned around and had to restrain himself from drooling.

Prez was just gorgeous. 

He was wearing a pair of tight black jeans that showed off his... well... assets, a light gray henley and added to that, his freshly washed hair that fell in a halo around his face. The whole picture was breathtaking.

Casey forced himself to look away and turned to Loki who was watching him with a knowing look.

Casey muttered challengingly, "What?"

Loki smiled and shrugged, "Nothing." then turning to Prez, "Shall we go?"

Prez nodded, and followed Loki as he headed for the door, when Casey stopped them, "Loki, wait! Have you thought about the money for Prez, you know, the compensation payments."

Loki replied, "Oh! You do well to remind me." He reached into his pocket and handed Prez a card, "Here, this is the card from your account at the TVA bank. It's got money on it and even though it's nowhere near the damage, it'll keep you going long enough to move on, I know that it's not enough and-"

"Loki, it's okay." replied Prez, "You don't have to justify anything to me, I'm actually pretty satisfied with my fate." 

He glanced at Casey, grabbed the card, put it in his pocket and headed for the door.

Loki whispered without sound to Casey, "You heard him, he's pretty satisfied with his fate hmmm."

"Yes, yes, Loki, go away now," Casey replied as he rolled his eyes and pushed him toward the door.

Prez intervened, "Come on Loki, leave him alone now!"

"Hey, he was my friend before he became yours!"

Casey watched the two Loki's bicker, envious.

"Then get out of your fishbowl and see some of the world." 

But what if I didn't want to go back into the fishbowl afterwards?

Haven't you already stepped out of it by welcoming Prez into your home?

He looked behind him, at his apartment, tidy, clean, where everything was in its place and he looked again at the door which was closing on the two gods still talking with animation.

The one who doesn't try, is only wrong once. 

Casey grabbed his jacket, his keys then ran to the door and opened it, shouting, "Wait!"

The two Lokis turned to him and Prez asked, "Did we forget something?"

Casey inhaled deeply and replied, "Yes, me. I'm coming with you."

He walked toward them and as he saw Loki's fond smile and Prez's beaming smile of joy, he figured that whatever happened, he wouldn't be alone. The two gods stepped aside to make room for him between the two of them and Prez exclaimed, "Let's go on an adventure!"

Casey replied, "Buying clothes will be enough to get started."

Loki chuckled and they headed together to where the TVA agents were making the time doors appear.

When they got there, Loki made one appear and Casey looked at it, wary.

Prez moved closer to him and asked with concern, "Are you okay, Casey?"

Casey whispered, "This will be the first time."

Loky just put his hand through the door and tried to reassure his friend, "Look, it does nothing. You just feel a little suction and you don't even have time to catch your breath that you get there. I swear to you. Look."

Loki walked through the door and returned ten seconds later.

"See?"

Casey took a few breaths and walked hesitantly toward the door.

Prez pushed past him, stood right in front of him, and held out his hand, "How about we go through it together?"

Casey didn't answer, just nodded and grasped the outstretched hand.

Eyes lost in Prez's, he barely heard Loki, "Well boys, I'm off, there's a sale and I don't want to miss anything. See you on the other side!"

Prez said softly, coaxing Casey, "Let's go."

Casey replied, still holding his hand, "Ok. Let's go."

They walked through the door together, and after feeling the little suction Loki had mentioned, they were already on the other side, still holding hands. Casey looked up at Prez and was about to thank him when Prez picked him up and lifted him off the ground, "You did it! I'm proud of you!"

"Boys, this may be a private sale, but a little restraint please." teased Loki.

"Idiot!" retorted Casey as Prez put him down and then curious, he asked, "A private sale? What do you mean?"

Loki came over, put his arm around Casey and replied, "Well, my dear Casey, that means for the next few hours it's just us here. I've convinced the store manager as I was waiting for you."

Prez stepped forward and said to Loki, "Thank you."

Loki smiled and, looking at Casey, he retorted, "Even though I'm doing this a little bit for you, I admit I was mostly thinking about Casey, I figured the transition would be a little less difficult with only us. One step at a time."

If Casey still had a bit of resentment towards Loki for his dubious joke, it faded in light of the thoughtfulness he had just shown him.

"How did you convince the store manager then?"

"Prez, I am sorry but you're not going to like it. Earth-1108 worships Croki as a God and the New York of this earth has even erected a monument in his honor. I promised the manager I'd bring Croki to her to do some promotional photos."

Casey gave Prez a sidelong glance wondering how his friend would take it.

Prez looked at his bandaged wrist for a few seconds then shrugged, and said with a wink to Casey, "it's for a good cause, so I can deal with it."

Between Loki's attention and Prez's kindness, Casey figured that finally getting out of the fishbowl wasn't so bad.

"Well, follow me, I'll give you a tour. I know this store like the back of my han"

Casey and Prez rolled their eyes at Loki's antics and followed him down the aisles of the clothing store. 

A few moments later, Loki had left to join Mobius at home, saying he would return to pick them up three hours later.

Casey was sitting on the dressing room benches waiting.

Prez opened the curtain and asked, "What about this one?"

Casey looked at him then shook his head, "No, still not."

"But Cas...this is the fifth one I've tried on, what don't you like?"

"They're all... green."

Prez rolled his eyes in exasperation, "But green is my color! It's the color of the Lokis."

Casey replied with a stubborn look, "That's just it, I thought you wanted to be different. To be you. You chose your name because you liked it. So tell me, did you choose this color because it's the color of Loki or because you like it?"

Those last words stopped Prez from retorting. 

Casey was right.

He thought back to his discussion with Mobius.

"Don't conform to what you think people expect of you." 

He nodded, a little confused because he didn't know what to do now. Casey stood up and walked over to him, "Give me all the tops you've chosen and wait here, okay?"

Prez complied and waited.

A few moments later, Casey returned with arms full of tops of all sorts of colors.

"Casey?"

Casey placed all the clothes on the coat racks in the dressing room then turned to Prez, "These are the tops you had chosen, but in all the colors available, so take your time and make your choice. And don't think about what I'm going to like, but think about what you like and what you feel like wearing, okay?"

Prez shook his head with a fond smile on his lips, "You're really something Casey, you know."

Casey chuckled, "Me? No, I'm just a regular guy." and visibly embarrassed, he pushed Prez into the dressing room, "Come on, go try it all on." and closed the curtain behind him.

Moments later, Prez opened the curtain and was wearing a purple henley, and it was so breathtaking that Casey thought his jaw would drop.

"So, what do you think?" asked Prez, unaware of the reaction he had just provoked.

Casey pulled himself together and asked, "It's more for me to ask you what you think."

"The reason I tried it is because I like it, so now I want to know your opinion."

Casey insisted, "If I tell you I don't like it, will you still buy it?"

Prez sighed, exasperated, "You're annoying me, yes I like it and yes I would buy it anyway, that's it! Happy?"

Casey laughed, "Yes, I'm happy! Because you are making a choice for yourself! And yes, you look great in that top. Um... I mean it looks great on you."

"You both look really cute."

They turned to the person who had just spoken. It was the store manager, an older woman with a sweet smile on her face.

She continued with a dreamy expression, "The way you two bicker, it reminds me of when my husband and I used to do that. Young love is truly a beautiful thing." 

They both looked at her with bemused eyes and Casey replied, "You... you're mistaken," he stammered a little as he felt his cheeks flush, "We're not... a couple..."

The old lady replied sheepishly, "Oh sorry, sorry. I just thought you two were cute together, that's all." 

They both let out a nervous chuckle, reassuring her that all was well until she was out of sight. 

Prez asked, "Why did she think we were dating?"

"How would I know?" replied Casey with a shrug before continuing, "Go on with your try on."

Prez complied and they returned to their bickering during the various clothing fittings.

As they proceeded to the checkout, Casey watched Prez pay, his eyes shining with joy, and when he saw the knowing look on the sales woman's face, he thought to himself that he was really screwed.

"So boys? Are you done?"

Loki had just appeared through the time door and added, "Shall we go?"

Prez stepped forward and held out his hand to Casey, who didn't hesitate to take it. He was aware he had no reason for it as their destination was well known to him. But did he need a reason?

It was Saturday and on Saturday, Casey indulged himself.

Loki watched his two friends pass the time door and looked at the old lady who was glancing at them.

When Casey and Prez had disappeared, she gave Loki a thumbs up and said with a mischievous little smile on her lips, "They don't know it yet, but it's only a matter of time."

Loki rubbed his hands together in satisfaction as he passed the timedoor, happy.

Main Post

#Casey x President Loki #Casey #President Loki #Lokius #Loki #Mobius m mobius #kid loki #alligator loki #croki #Crack Treated Seriously #Crack Relationships #one bed trope #living together #domestic fluff #getting together #enemies to friends to lovers #CasPrez #PreSey #VoteFish #GloriousPisces

[howifixedme]

Mexico City

So, I decided to not make a blog about something that potentially could hold me down, and drown me under the violent currents of the past. The past is something I should cherish, and most importantly learn from. But, glorifying it, or for that matter clinging on to it, is not ideal.

So, Instead, I am going to focus my writing here on my hard work on fixing myself. Not a day too late, to do so, right?

So, what I have been doing, I'll most likely delve deeper into as time goes by but about 20 days ago, I got a moment of clarity and I have been wide open since then.

Tonight's post, however, is just a random thought that I had about my lack of being able to put certain simple opinions into words. Like, for example - What do I think of Mexico City? Why can't I just answer that, letting the words flow? I think it's because my mind is always occupied with these very self-centered topics, AKA me. I don't like that.

So, Mexico City is one of the largest cities in the world. Yet, it feels intimate. Grant you, that the areas that I, like most foreigners actually move around in, are quite limited. It's 6 neighborhoods, all connected, all safe, and ridiculously beautiful. And small. It feels small. I can walk from one area to another, it's a breeze. I love the nature that's heavily integrated into every corner of every street. Trees linger on top of me as I walk down the narrow streets on the periphery of the parks. The blossoming Jacaranda not only towers above me but also constantly falls to the ground beneath me. There's is something special about how the sun shines through the branches in Mexico City. I haven't seen that anywhere else in the world, and I have been around, to say the least.

I love the tacos, although right now I am not eating any of them. The fried shrimp ones are the best. And, although I am learning the language now, I do like that it''s a lot of foringers. Makes me feel a bit... not that alone.

Hmmm... I'll continue working being able to pinpoint my opinions about, what I used to dismiss as trivial things. It's not. You what's trivial? A passing thought of jealousy. You know what's fucked up? Making that passing thought a piece of what tears down love.

Yeah.

[imstressedx]

for the writing ask game, i’m being greedy: 3, 5, 9, 38, 39

oooh, goodie!

in reference to this ask game

3. What is your writing ritual and why is it cursed?

idk if i necessarily have a ritual, and that's probably why it's cursed. i'm a slave to the inspiration, and just write with whatever is available whenever inspiration strikes. i have the notes app on my phone, gdoc, a physical notebook, sticky notes random slips of paper-- i even wrote on the back of a parking ticket once, because that's all i had available, and if that doesn't sound cursed to you idk what does.

5. Do you have any writing superstitions? What are they and why are they 100% true?

this pretty easily ties into my previous answer: do not trust your brain to remember later. write now, and worry about getting it to the gdoc later

9. Do you believe in ghosts? This isn’t about writing I just wanna know

i am team "i think it would be really cool of ghosts exist, but i have yet to see any compelling evidence to make me actually believe". i absolutely love ghost files on yt (and am Very Excited for the premiere of mystery files!) but i mostly hold it in the same regard as horoscopes and tarot card readings-- would be v cool if it was real, but is probably not.

38. What is something about your writing process YOU think is Really Weird? If you are comfortable, please share. If you’re not comfortable, what do you think cats say about us?

hmmm. i feel like i'm gonna sound like a broken record, but i mostly write stand-alone scenes, and don't really plot-- at least, not initially. sometimes i will write a scene that i like so much i will try and find a way to use it, other times i'll write a couple scenes and then be like "this could be a story". for example: my currently unpublished (but hopefully for not much longer!) derry girls fic started out as a random conversation between james and erin. then i wrote another scene between michelle and erin. then i wrote another scene between james and michelle-- and it was finally at this point i was like "hey i could tie all these scenes together and make a fic out of it".

^me figuring out my own plot

(also i think cats love us and just have a different attachment style than dogs. that's why they basically domesticated themselves so that they could be with us)

39. What keeps you writing when you feel like giving up?

lots of things, i guess. having other writer friends (like yourself ❤️) to bounce ideas off of always helps, they can help keep you motivated and excited about whatever you're working on. because i'm looking for a specific kind of fic that doesn't seem to exist yet, and so i must go and create it. because, as much as i don't like to perpetuate the stereotype of the tortured artist, i use my writing a lot to figure out my own feelings and thoughts on stuff. a lot of my writing is actually just me exorcising my own demons-- and i just to do that through a fictional platform because characters are all going to approach a topic differently. it allows me to take a concept or a feeling and look at it from different angles or through different interpretations, as opposed to like, say, journaling, where after a while i start to feel like i'm just talking into an echo chamber. but, even then, sometimes i do still take breaks from writing, and that's okay! i've always been a writer-- i remember plotting out a whole fantasy trilogy when i was in elementary school-- so even if i stop writing for a while, i know i'll always make my way back to it.

#areseebee #ask game #sorry i got rambley

[sapphire-dreamsky]

What Lord Poseidon's Brothers Really Think About His Recent Marriage With Lady (Y/N)! Or When Brothers Lovingly Drag Their Brother As Revenge For His Attitude During All These Years!

Brought to you by OlympusTV, the only channel brave enough to face these temperamental gods and ask questions which no one dares to!

For today's hot topic, one brave soul will be asking the entourage of Poseidon how they feel about his recent marriage to Lady (Y/N)! Stay tune for our courageous Mr. Reporter!

On Mt. Olympus

Reporter who wants a scoop: Ah! Good morning Lord Zeus, what was your reactions when you heard that your older brother Poseidon got recently married?

Zeus: Hmmm? Who are you? I never saw you around? Oh no...Are you a new demi-god? If you are, can you say you are not my child? You see, I'm actually on good behaviour right now. I don't want Hera to scold me again!

Reporter: Ah, no I am a new reporter at OlympusTv who was tasked to ask the Gods related to Lord Poseidon how they feel about him finding a bride.

Zeus: Oh well! I must say, I'm actually pleasantly surprised by my older brother Poseidon. He had me scared for a good while there, you know? I thought he would marry the ground with how he stared at it so passionately everytime! Or better yet! I thought he would marry that Trident of his! I mean, who craddles their weapon like this?! Hahaha! But I'm glad that he actually managed to take his eyes off of the ground to actually look at a proper breathing being! Good job (Y/N)! Eeeeekkkkkk!

Reporter: We seem to have lost Lord Zeus after a wave coming out of nowhere crashed into him and carried him away to the bottom of the oceans. In the meantime, please follow us to the God of Conquest!

On the Ship of the God of Conquest Adamas

Adamas: What I think about Poseidon getting married? I don't really care. But I need to talk with my sister-in-law. I have to ask her how she managed to make him look at her in the eyes! But that damn Poseidon never lets me get close to her! I wonder how she did it. Hey, how do you think she did it?

Reporter: Well, she is his wife...he must love her?

Adamas: Love? The only time he has ever loved something was when he saw that clown fish when he was a child! I spent 5 years trying to make him look at me, but then this freaking clown fish appears and suddenly he goes heart eyes at iiiiittttttttt!!!

Reporter: It seems that we also lost Lord Adamas! The ground suddenly cracked open and he fell into the abyss...wait...aren't we on a ship?

Hermes flying in through the balcony: Mr. Reporter, your sponsor is advising you to immediately head to Helheim.

Reporter: Helheim?! Wait, I don't want to die!

Hermes: Don't worry Mr. Reporter, I will bring you there safe and sound. Hold on tight.

Reporter: But-But-But I'm not dead yet!

Hermes: I can assure you that you won't die now.

In Helheim in the Palace of Lord Hades

Hades: You want my reactions upon knowing that my emotionally constipated younger brother who started following me around for five years since he learned to walk, copying everything that I did and dressing up exactly like me, was finally able to get his eyes off his beloved ground to realise that there are more beautiful things in this world than the ground he walks on everyday?

Reporter who is trying to understand what Hades said quickly in one full sentence without taking a moment to breathe: Uh...yeah.

Hades: Amazed.

Reporter: I'm sorry?

Hades: I felt amazed. For one, that someone was willing to look past his horrible attitude. For two, that she could actually speak with him and didn't burst into tears after their first two word exchanges which were really just insults from Poseidon. And I would know since I was present that time! I am just amazed by her ability to stand him really.

Reporter: Seems like Lord Poseidon is a lot of work...

Hades: Nah. He likes to behave in a haughty manner but he is a secret softie. He used to sleep with this stuff tortoise plush toy every night as a kid. Rhea and I had sewn this plush toy for him before his birth so that he could have something to hold on to when he sleeps. He still has it somewhere in his drawer or something. I saw it last time I crashed at his place.

Reporter: Oh? He has a plush toy? That is unexpected.

Hades waving his hand dismissively at the reporter while resuming his reading on a new case file for the administration of a new soul in Helheim: Eh. If that is all. I got to resume reading this. See you later.

Reporter: Ah, thank you so much for this interview, Lord Hades!

Hades: Don't thank me yet.

Reporter: This is all for today's video! We hope that you enjoyed having this new insight on the fearful god of the sea, Poseidon! Stay tune for more if you want to know more about the gods of Olympus at our channel, OlympusTV! Leave your burning questions in the comments down below, and who knows, maybe we will ask your questions in our next interview with the gods next week for some more juicy gossip! Thank you, again to our sponsor who wished to stay anonymous for their own safety, who protected us during the duration of this interview! We wish you a happy weekend!

Reporter: Whew! That was a close call this time!

Hermes: Indeed, you might have ended up at Helheim for good this time. You might want to avoid topics with Lord Poseidon for some time now.

Reporter: The next Olympian is Lord Ares according to the schedule.

Hermes: That will be easier than this week's hot topic. You can do this on your own.

Reporter: Wait, but have you seen Ares?! He is three times my height!

Hermes: You can do it! Good luck, Mr. Reporter!

#snv poseidon x reader #snv hades #snv adamas #snv poseidon #snv zeus #snv hermes #olympus brothers antics #💭

[pies-writes-and-more]

I hate that I love you p. 13

13. I hate you

Series Masterlist

Previous Chapter // Epilogue 

Warnings: annoyingly persistent dude shows up this time, but not for long so don’t worry! probably some swearing too, and a first time writer’s SMAU so might be awful lol

Pairing: Tsukishima Kei x Fem!Reader

A/N: how are we already done this fic omg... i won’t lie to yall, I finished the majority of the chapters within a few days cause I was so excited to write haha. But thank you so much for everyone who has kept up with this series and has interacted with me about it! I love interactions so never feel like you can’t interact okay? :) 

Anyways! Onto the story! More written things this time cause you know, we can’t have a big finale and a confession that needs to be said over a text (or at least i don’t personally like text confessions so here we are lol) Enjoy :)

Tsukishima groaned internally as he thought about what to type next. This was the moment he had been waiting for all week. You were finally talking to him, even if it was over text. He didn’t want to mess this up and have your name never pop up in his notifs again. But what would he even say? 

He wasn’t even really sure what happened, how he ended up here waiting for the nurse to bring him an ice pack. He knew the gist of it but the details were still a tad hazy.

“Doesn’t matter how much she rejects me! I’m going to keep trying! Girls like that, you know. If you start slacking off, she’ll just start ignoring you!” The guy had practically yelled across the courtyard in Tsukishima’s direction. It wasn’t that it really pissed him all that much off. It was more the way the guy was talking about you that got under Tsukishima’s skin. “She’s just so beautiful and so smart, she’d make the perfect girl to have on my arm! I don’t care how many times she says no, Y/N’ll be mine eventually!”

Before Tsukishima even knew it, he had a fistful of the guy’s shirt in his hand, glaring down at him, “Stop talking about her like she’s some sort of prize. Besides, how old are you? Even a toddler can understand what NO means.”

Maybe Noya and Tanaka had been passing through and Yamaguchi had called for their help, or maybe they just decided to jump in, but before he knew it, Tsukishima felt himself fall back. Noya and Tanaka had both thrown him aside (neither of them meaning to, they just had a lot of adrenaline and wanted to get up in front). Even though Tsukishima told Y/N he didn’t really hit his head, he could remember the pain surging through his skull. His head was killing him.

Did he black out? Or was he just missing pieces? Tsukishima thought back to the moment and frowned. All he could really remember was the pain and then suddenly, you were crouched next to him with that worried look in your eyes. Honestly, he thought he was dreaming because you were sitting there right next to him, holding his hand and touching his face. 

“Tsukki, are you okay?” You had asked him, helping him sit up. He felt his cheeks flush in that moment, realizing what had just happened. Tanaka and Noya were still yelling at the guy, not even realizing they had practically thrown Tsukishima across the courtyard. 

“OH SO YOU THINK YOU CAN TREAT GIRLS LIKE SHIT HMMM???” Tanaka had screamed.

“IF YOU SO MUCH AS LOOK IN Y/N’S DIRECTION WE WILL COME AFTER YOU. DON’T YOU KNOW THE POWER OF SECOND YEARS?” Noya had added in, the two of them making the best intimidating faces they could manage.

“We should get you to the nurse’s office,” you had told him and before he knew it here he was. He could remember leaning against you as the two of you walked but other than that, it was all a blur.

“Here’s an ice pack, try to rest okay? No volleyball for at least a few days too,” the nurse was telling him and he just nodded. He hadn’t even gotten another word typed out before she had come back and now he was going to have to face you without really knowing what to say.

“So?” You looked up at him in anticipation and Tsukishima wasn’t really sure what you were asking about - his last text or his head.

“I’m fine,” he stated quietly, holding the ice to his head. “I don’t think I have a concussion but I can’t play for a while.”

“I’m sorry,” you mumbled nervously, eyes darting away from his. This had been because of you. You felt the guilt fill you up - if you had just gotten the guy to leave you alone in the first place, none of this would’ve happened. Maybe you should’ve done what Bokuto and the others told you to do and talk to the school’s administration about it. But it seemed like such a trivial thing to complain about.

“Oi,” Tsukishima interrupted your thoughts, nudging you. He could see that guilt written all over your face. “Stop it. It’s not like you hit me or anything.”

“Yeah well, but it’s not like I didn’t want to,” you huffed, frowning up at him. The two of you stood there awkwardly for a moment, both of you waiting for the other to bring up the topic of anticipation. “So... are you going to explain your last text?” You finally asked, a ball of nerves sitting in your stomach. 

Tsukishima bit on his inner cheek, thinking about all the things he had wanted to say to you for the past week. “I’m bad with words when it comes to how I’m feeling,” he stated quietly. “I’m good with facts. I know for a fact that there are so many things about you that I hate.”

Wow great start to the conversation, you thought to yourself, your heart falling a bit. The two of you hadn’t spoken in a week and this is how he wanted to do things?

“Let me finish,” he grumbled, seeing the discomfort in your eyes. “I hate how you click your pen when you’re nervous for a test, I hate that you doodle on my notes in class or that you draw smiley faces on my hand when I’m not paying attention. I hate that you text me at 3 in the morning to ask me questions about the homework or just to ask me how I am. I hate the fact that you refuse to put your books back in your bag and that you’ll just carry them in your arms because we both know you’re clumsy and that you’ll end up dropping something. I hate that you’re always the loudest person during my matches, I hate that I can pick you out of a crowd and that when I can’t see you I get worried.”

Your eyebrows furrowed a little as he continued, his eyes now starting to avoid yours. 

“I hate that you get along with all my teammates and I hate that they make you smile and laugh. I hate that you and Bokuto are good friends and that he makes you happy. I hate everything about you because everything you do just makes me like you more.”

You blink in confusion... was this.. supposed to be some sort of twisted confession?

“I hate that you were so childish that you ignored me for a whole week for being an asshole and that it’s been the most miserable week of my life. I hate that I heard your voicemail more times than your actual voice this week because you wouldn’t pick up the phone. I hate seeing that you hadn’t sent me a text message back, I hate that I wake up at 3 in the morning just in case you reached out to me. I hate that there were no smiley faces on my arm and no doodles on my notes, I hate that I wasn’t able to help you pick up your books or study with you. I hate that I can’t stop thinking about you from the time that I wake up, to the time I go to bed, I hate that you’re in my dreams every single night and I hate that no matter how many times I’ve dreamt about saying these things, it’s never the way that you deserve. I hate that you’re effortlessly perfect and that every guy who walks by you knows it too,” Tsukishima’s hands balled into fists as he thought about it all, scoffing a little at himself. 

How desperate, he thought to himself. He hated how absolutely cheesy he sounded. But he couldn’t stop now. “I hate... I hate everything about you because everything you do just makes me fall harder for you. I hate that I love you, Y/N because no matter how much I want to hate you, I just can’t.”

Time must’ve stopped right then and there. Or else that’s what it felt like. Tsukishima had finally said the words that you were waiting for the whole time you’d known him. Tsukishima... loved you? Everything you felt was... mutual?

Maybe time hadn’t stopped at all and you were just staring at him in complete shock, because Tsukishima was shifting awkward in the empty hall the two of you were in, waiting for some sort of reply out of you. “O-Oh!” He recovered quickly, his whole face turning red, feeling like it was you waiting for him to say something else. “A-And I’m sorry. For being an ass.” His eyes dropped to the ground, holding his head in shame, “I know I was being a dick about Bokuto. And after the first game you came to. I thought that the whole jersey thing was going to make you realize how I felt but you just thought it was to freak out your stalker and...”

“I only thought that cause when you gave me your jacket, you told me it was for the plan,” you interrupted quickly, biting on your lip nervously. “I didn’t... I didn’t want to believe that you would really give me your jersey cause that would mean that everything Yamaguchi said was true.”

Tsukishima looked at you for a moment, a small scowl on his lips, “What did Yamaguchi say?”

A small smile started to play on your lips, “That Tsukishima Kei had a big fat crush on me. Who knew?” You couldn’t help but giggle, watching as this tall glaring bean pole started to go pink with embarrassment. There was such a relief off of your shoulders, knowing that he was admitting how he was feeling and apologizing. 

“S-So you knew?”

“Of course not,” you laugh, shaking your head. “I figured Yamaguchi just told me that because he was encouraging my crush on you!” The words slipped from your lips before you could slap a hand over your mouth, eyes widening as you look up at him.

There was that stupid smirk on his lips, growing bigger as he tilted his chin up in pride, “So Y/N Y/L/N has a crush on me huh?”

You scoff, rolling your eyes a little in embarrassment, “Pfft. What? Me? No way.”

Tsukishima smirked, catching your chin in his fingers and forcing you to look at him, “Go out with me,” he demanded softly, pressing his forehead against yours gently. “For real this time.”

Your whole body was going hot with how he was looking at you, the soft but teasing look in his eyes was driving you insane. You hadn’t ever seen him look at you like this before, “O-Okay,” you mumbled quickly and Tsukishima smiled. A real genuine giddy sort of smile.

Before you could embarrass yourself further, you shove his shoulder gently and pull away, walking towards the exit, “But if you’re ever that much of an ass to me ever again, I’m never talking to you again!” You yell over your shoulder, trying to pretend like your heart wasn’t just leaping out of your chest. 

It didn’t take long for Tsukishima’s long legs to catch up with you, casually opening the hallway doors for you, “Fine.”

“Don’t think you confessing to me makes up for anything, I’m still mad at you.”

“What? Why! I said I was sorry! I thought you said it was ice cream or words! And I apologized!” His scowl was evident, even though his heart was fluttering. Everything he wanted, it was finally happening. 

“Well you were a real asshole so you’re going to need at least words AND ice cream.”

“You’re impossible.”

“But you loveeee me.”

“Maybe.”

“Just wait till Yamaguchi finds out your whole confession was about you hating me,” you mused as the two of you walked and Tsukishima groaned a little. With how sassy Yamaguchi was getting, he was never going to hear the end of it.

“I will literally buy you any kind of ice cream you want, just don’t tell him,” Tsukishima mumbled, not wanting to admit how embarrassed he would be if his best friend scolded him over his confession.

“No way,” you laugh, shaking your head with a huge smile. “Tsukishima Kei finally confessed to me and I need Yamaguchi to know that he did it in a very Tsukishima way.”

The blond boy just groaned but he swiftly grabbed your hand and stuffed it in his pocket with his own. You tried not to seem so surprised and quickly started looking in every direction but his, not wanting him to notice how nervous you were getting every time his thumb would slowly make a circle along your skin. The two of you walked back to your friends, chatting away the tension that had been so thick before, as if it was a totally normal day for you. As if both of you weren’t thinking I’m the luckiest person alive.

Taglist (Let me know if you’d like to be added to my permanent Haikyuu tag :) Thank you so much for all the love everyone!)

@random-fandom-girl-24 @intergalactic-mango @celestaire @lucyheartfilias-wife @owlnymph @lucyrocks86 @pinkhairedsapphic @mariachiii @aurumk @sana-li @mirikusashes @earphonekiyouka @why-000 @devilkittymusic @420-uwu @scphiredrafts @fantasycantasy @its-the-aerieljeane @laninasinnombre @trashy-simp @thisnoodlewritesao3 @darling-daydreaming @yourmajestythegreatest @so-lo-stuff @ibimyeon @satan-ruler-of-hells @ahiae @kpopandstarwarswhynot @imnisneedshercoffee @ramen-maker @chelly-ilysmiwdfy @animeanxiety @kaylig02 @upwardscomma @jeppiet @simplyyyy @ashtheticals @calumsfringe @kac-chowsballs @dreamsandregrets @flamingosis @loving-unicorns106 @darkvadeeer @mykuronekome​

#tsukishima kei #tsukishima x y/n #tsukkishima kei #tsukishima kei x reader #tsukishima x reader #tsukkishima x. reader #haikyuu x y/n #haikyu x y/n #haikyuu #haikyuu!! #haikyu smau #haikyuu fake texts #reader insert #haikyuu fluff #haikyu fluff #hq x reader #hq x you #hq x y/n #hq fics #tsukishima #tsukishima heacanons #tsukishima x you #tsukki

[1plus1kiyoomi]

Chapter 9: Fried

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You groan as you look around your room, scattered paperwork and schoolwork all over the place. You have so much to do but you don’t know where to start. Out of frustration, you breakdown. Rice hears your sobs so he runs to you, and licks your arms. You take him into your arms, hugging him. He starts barking, worried about you.

“(Y/N), what’s wrong with Rice?” You hear Kita ask from outside of your room, causing you to cry harder.

The two of you haven’t been in touch lately since you’re trying so hard to distant yourself from him. You’ve always reasoned to him that you were busy, because you were, and you still are. But you’d be lying if you say that he isn’t one of the reasons of your breakdown.

You miss him so much. You want to cling to him like always. But you also seek reassurance from him. You need a label to your relationship. You’re afraid that he’s just leading you on because of his ex. What if he hasn’t moved on from her? Moving on from 7-year relationship is not easy, and from his friends’ words, he loved her a lot. Maybe he still loves her.

“I’m coming in,” Kita says and slides the door open. You grab a pillow and cover your face with it. You hear him sigh, and go around the room, probably picking up the pieces of paper. You feel him sit in front of you, so you jump in your mattress and hide under the blanket. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m just tired,” you say in between your sobs. Rice jumps on top of your covered face, making you pull the blanket down so the dog can see you. He gives you a puppy look, whimpering. You cry again, burying your face on Rice’s fur.

Kita stands from where he was sitting, then leaves the room. A few minutes later, he comes back with a tray of food. “Eat first, then get some rest.”

“I’m really fine,” you assure him, wiping the tears off your cheeks. He sets the tray down on the floor and you hold Rice tightly, not wanting him to devour the food. He takes a spoonful of rice with a piece of beef on top, then feeds you. “Thank you. I can feed myself.”

“No. It’s fine. You seem really busy nowadays. This is the least I can do.” He feeds you soup this time, which you reluctantly accept. You feel like you’re being babied and you feel a little bit of ease. “I know you have a lot on your plate right now, but you shouldn’t forget that you’re the most important dish on your plate.”

The metaphor he used makes you chuckle, completely stopping your eyes from tearing up. You nod enthusiastically, taking another spoonful of what he’s feeding you. The three of you stay silent as he feeds you and sometimes Rice. The silence is comforting. You can even say that it’s helping calm you down.

Finally finishing your dinner, Kita tucks you in bed. “Rice, let’s get out. Let your mom rest.” Kita orders the dog, but you and your furry son look up to him with pleading eyes, begging him to let Rice stay in your room. “Fine. Just for tonight.” Kita gives in, ruffling the tops of your heads.

Kita heads to the kitchen to the kitchen, leaving the dishes by the sink. He takes a seat on one of the cushions, then says his thanks before he starts eating. It has been exactly 10 days. 10 days since he last ate dinner with you. If it weren’t for Rice, he would have eaten alone.

Knowing that you’re busy, Kita doesn’t push you to eat dinner with him. He sometimes feels lonely, but you should prioritize your work. He admits that he misses you clinging to him and you annoying him every chance you get. He wants to tell you that he wants to share your burden with you, but it seems like you don’t give him the chance to talk.

Kita isn’t stupid. Aside from your busyness with the shelter and school, he’s aware that you’re avoiding him. You aren’t so subtle about it. Who stays at school until midnight? He also knows you’re purposely coming home after his bedtime. He waits for you every night just to make sure you come home safe.

Confusion is what he feels. He knows what you’re doing, but he doesn’t understand why you’re doing it.

After eating, Kita does the dishes then heads to your room. He checks you and Rice, and the two of you are sleeping soundly. He picks up your schoolwork, then decides to do them for you. It’s a little thing he can do to help you ease your stress.

“I’ll start with this,” Kita quietly says, taking your worksheet for Engineering Math. He takes his phone out and looks for a Youtube tutorial on how to do the topic you’re assigned to.

The next morning, you wake up without Rice around anymore. “He and Kita must have gone to the fields already.” You stretch your arms and see your schoolwork and paperwork arranged and in order. A note is on top of your binder so you read it.

(Y/N)

I finished doing your tasks for school. I also wrote some notes for your Systems Software class. I read that you have a test on it. I’ve also highlighted important notes in your other classes in case you have a surprise quiz.

Don’t forget to eat breakfast. I prepared a bento box for your lunch. Make you eat it. I will check later. Take a break, too. Stop overworking yourself. If you need help, I’m just there.

Rice and I are off to work. I hope to see you at dinner.

I miss you.

- Shinsuke

Tears come out of your eyes as you read his note. “What am I even doing? Why am I aimlessly avoiding him? He must have spent all night doing these.” You take your phone to check the time and you see that it’s almost lunch, which means all your morning classes are finished. “Kita is going to kill me.”

After a long day at school, you head home. You look for an easy recipe online, in hopes that you can make a decent dish for Kita. It’s your first cooking. You don’t even know why you thought of making him dinner as an apology gift. The kitchen is one of the places you’re forbidden to go to but here you are.

“Is 2 tablespoon really enough?” You ask yourself. You shrug, then pour more soy sauce. You forget about the recipe and make the dish using your instinct. If it’s meant to taste good, it’ll taste good.

“I’m home!” You hear Kita from the front door. Rice comes running to you at the kitchen, excitedly jumping on your legs.

“Hello, little boy. How was the fields today? Did you miss mom?” You coo at him, lifting him from the ground.

“You’re actually here,” you hear Kita say, making you look up towards him. Putting Rice down, you go to him. You wrap your arms around his waist, smiling at him with your signature grin. He missed that smile.

“Well, of course, baby. You said you miss me so I’m here,” you tell him, snuggling your face on his chest.

Kita hugs you back, placing his chin on your shoulder. The two of you stand like that for a minute. You realized that last night, it wasn’t the silence that was comforting you. It was Kita. His presence is enough to make you feel less stressed. He gives you a light squeeze before pulling away from you. You look up to him and see that his eyes are on the dining table.

“I made dinner. Look at my rice! It’s perfect!” You proudly say, pulling him to the dining area. He stares at the food you made, and you nervously wait for his comment. He takes a spoon and tastes the supposedly curry dish. “How does it taste?”

Kita doesn’t answer you but looks at you emotionlessly. “It doesn’t taste that bad. It’s edible.” You sulk but start eating anyway. “How was your quiz?”

“I got a perfect score thanks to your notes. You’re really smart! Were you in the top of your class in high school?” You compliment him.

“I had a scholarship,” Kita answers and your jaw drops. How can he be so perfect at everything? He’s athletic, he’s handsome, he’s talented, he’s smart, he’s well-mannered, his soft spoken. He has probably not sin. But he has to be bad at something. But what? Is he a virgin? Is he bad in bed? He seems like the type to wait after marriage. So you’ll have to marry him to find out. Your cheeks heat up just from the thought.

Due to your daydreaming, you don’t hear Kita talking. “Hmmm? What did you say baby?”

“I said I like my eggs fried in the morning,” he repeats in his usual nonchalant voice. His words cause you to short circuit, unsure of what you heard.

“Why are you suddenly saying that?” You hide your face in embarrassment, flustered by his words. Rice is at side, staring at you as if he’s judging you. He probably is.

“You asked 3 months ago,” Kita explains, eating as if didn’t say anything.

“I know I did! But why say it now?” You glare at him. He puts his chopsticks down and bore his eyes at yours.

“Because I like you back now.”

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Facts:

Resting is very very important. No matter how busy you are, please spare some time to rest. Staying hydrated is as important. Don’t forget to drink your liquids. <3

Sleep is important in processing and committing new information to memory through a process known as memory consolidation. So pulling an all-nighter for a quiz isn’t really the best thing to do.

Sleep is important to overall well-being and mood. Sleep deprivation can often cause irritability, impatience, inability to concentrate, and moodiness.

Rest does not only involve physical relaxation, but mental as well. Mental exertion can also affect your body’s ability to cope or keep up and can cause you to feel overwhelmed and physically exhausted.

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Taglist: @vicassa  @ptv-hades  @steggy4ever  @booklover240  @toripersonalacc @mkazuyuh  @smoltiddygf @adrasteiaxandromedaa @leinnah  @a-applepi @kellesvt @xxlightsaberxx  @youpieceofwasabi @bandolls @wheelzzzies @apollochjld @sakusa-simp @neomuxuxi @sempiternal-amour @tnu-ree @mindofess @alittlebitofrain @agaashesmilktea​ @aquzairus @ynjimenez @sempiternal-amour @diyosku @dinablossom @atomicpie1115 @lililiynx @onlyshinji @melodiamore @bunnybitesthedust @angrylittleriri @rogueofbullshit @8zmingi @aam1na @yuueisteria @4kaashl  @ohhoneyvee @kouffee-ink @amberisnotcrazy @shinyaluv

#haikyuu x reader #haikyuu smau #haikyuu imagines #haikyuu series #kita shinsuke smau #kita shinsuke x reader #kita imagines #kita x reader #kita smau #haikyuu kita #kita shinsuke

[whereisten]

Sweet Pea

A Haechan fic that’s part of our Halloween Series!

Summary: Who knew the undead could be so..lovely. You hated arrogant singer Haechan when he was alive, but could you love him now that he was..dead?

Pairing: Rockstar!Haechan (turns into a zombie) x Journalist!female reader

Genre: fluff, angst, horror, a little smut

Word Count: 9K

Warnings: death mention, car accident mention, blood and gore mention, wild animal death, character death (and resurrection?), cursing, some violence, cheating mention, smut: mention of penetration.

(A/n: THANK YOU GUYS FOR ALL YOUR SUPPORT FOR THIS SERIES SO FAR!! We hope you enjoy everything we put out🥺❤️ i did not proofread this so sorry for any mistakes uh ha ha)

————

“Lisa..I really don’t want to interview Mr. I-Am-God’s-gift-To-This-World.” You sigh and hold your head down while sitting at your desk.

“Well, do you really want to switch and dive into the dark web for me?” Lisa turns to face you.

The two of you are journalists assigned to two very different topics for this week’s news articles.

You, being the one responsible for writing articles based on the music industry, were faced with the grueling task of interviewing pop rock’s most famous star, Haechan.

From what you had heard, Haechan was an arrogant bastard that gave all of his interviewers absolute hell. He gave sarcastic, abrupt answers that they could barely work from. But lucky for you, you were the one assigned to interview him as he promotes his second album in your town.

If there was anything worse than a crazy rockstar with a bad reputation, it was one that was incredibly good looking too. 

You had to admit, from the pictures you had seen, Haechan was dangerously handsome with brown wavy hair and skin kissed by the sun itself. Girls swooned over the way his delicate fingers strummed his guitar and the way his soothing, high pitched voice sang words about love to them.

You had to remind yourself that it was all an act, however, he didn’t give a damn about them or anyone else besides himself.

Could interviewing him be worse than risking your life by going too deep into the dark web? Maybe.

You looked up at the ceiling and bit your lip as you thought about it.

Lisa scoffed and shook her head. “Don’t tell me you’re actually thinking about it.”

“Listen…I-“

“You got this, what’s the worst he can do? Call security on you like that one magenta-haired rockstar guy did to his makeup artist?”

You groaned and placed your head back down onto your arms. But she was right, what was the worst that could happen?

———

[The Next Day]

You were let into Haechan’s dressing room by his manager.

“Well, good luck in there.” His manager raised his brows and quickly closed the door. It felt like you were being let into a Lion’s cage with no way out.

You took a deep breath. Your hair was tied back, your bun felt tighter than it did five minutes ago. You smoothed your hands over your pencil skirt and quickly fixed the collar of your button down shirt.

When you turned around, you saw the legend himself, typing on his iPhone. He was probably tweeting something out to his 10 million followers or coming up with some “sweet” caption for his Instagram groupies.

You cleared your throat, you didn’t want to interrupt him, but you really didn’t have much time. 

“Excuse me...Mr. Lee?”

He didn't respond, he kept typing.

“Mr. Lee?!” You said with more volume.

He rolled his eyes and looked up. You felt your breath get caught in your chest. He was magnificent. Not a flaw in sight. His eyes were of a perfect crescent shape and sparkles in the light of the vanity mirror. And his lips were a beautiful heart shape as they puckered before he spoke.

“Yes?” He answered with annoyance in his tone.

“My name is y/n, I’m here to ask a few questions.”

“Oh..I see, well, I’m not really into the “boorish teacher type” but I’m sure we can make it work with some role playing..” Haechan bites his bottom lip as he eyes you up and down.

“Um..I..”

He places his phone down and walks over to you.

“Tell me, teacher, do you have a ruler to spank me with?”

You stumble backwards, your back hitting the door.

“I-I from the Neo Chronicles actually, I am here to interview you.”

He stands over you in his leather jacket, placing his hand on the door beside your head as you cower. He seems to be misunderstanding your purpose for being there, but you did like being close to him. He smelled like fresh lemons and summer. His warmth was unlike anything else and with his face being so close to yours, you could see every beauty mark. You knew any other person would’ve been a puddle had they been this close to him, but you were growing to be quite annoyed.

He leans down to whisper in your ear. “Oh, so you want to be a journalist, okay then so you want to record me? I can make any sound you’d like me to make, all you have to do is touch the right spots.” He says seductively while staring down your shirt.

You shiver and shake off your goosebumps. “Oh my God, Haechan! I’m just here to ask a few questions okay?! I’m not some..escort!”

He steps back and furrows his brows. “What? Then what the hell are you here for?”

“I’m the journalist!” You show him your badge with your name on it as it hung from a lanyard around your neck.

He rolls his eyes and plops down into his chair. 

“Boring. Go on.”

He waves a hand and motions for you to continue.

You sigh and hurry through your notes so you can get the hell out of there and away from this weird man.

“Okay, well let’s start off with your name. Your real name is Lee Donghyuk, why did you choose ‘Haechan’ as your stage name?”

“Why did you choose to pair that shirt with those god awful shoes?” Haechan begins to type on his phone again.

This little brat. 

“Haechan, please take my questions seriously, your manager has only given me ten minutes with you.”

“And yet, I could be doing so much more with our time than answering your useless questions..” he stops typing and looks you up and down again. “I could be giving you an interview to remember, don’t you think?”

You chuckle. “No offense, but you’re not my type, and also, I’m faithful to my boyfriend.” The first part was a lie, but you hoped he would feel a blow to his ego.

He scoffs. “Honey..I’m everyone’s type..”

“Anyway...what inspired you the most when writing this new album of yours?”

“Hmmm...you.”

You slam your iPad down onto the counter. “We don’t even know each other.”

“I wasn’t finished...Youuuutube.” Haechan smirks as you get more and more visibly upset.

“Haechan...I respect your musicianship, but you’re making this interview really difficult. I can’t do my job if you keep acting like this.” You try to play nice, maybe that would work.

“Well you’re not very good at this job, I have another job for you, if you’d like to try that.”

You scoff and raise your eyebrows. “You know what…”

He places his phone down and crosses his arms. “What? Is it time for the part of the interview where you storm off back to your little cubicle and fabricate an entire interview with bullshit answers I never gave?”

You remain still, silently thinking of ways to kill this man without being caught. 

You grit your teeth.

“Write a nice and pleasing story about me, sweetheart. I’ll be anticipating it.” He gets up and walks towards the door but you step in front of him to stop him.

“Listen, you little twat—“

He furrows his brows and gives you a frightening glare. “No, you listen. I’m the rockstar here, I don’t owe you anything, I’m worth so much money, you wouldn’t be able to wrap your head around it if you tried. You don’t matter to me or to anyone else. There’s 5 million of you and only one of me, the only difference between you and them is that other journalists are smart enough to get on their knees and prove that they’re worth a celebrity’s time. Now, miss—what was your name again?”

“Y/n.” You say through tight lips.

“Move.”

You step to the side as he walks past you, bumping into your shoulder on purpose before leaving.

You tried your best not to cry as you headed home that evening. You knew he was an asshole but you didn’t think he’d be *that* bad. You were thankful that you’d never have to see him again, but you hated the fact that it was up to you to create some story about your interview and fake his answers so that he’d remain a positive figure in the spotlight.

It pained you to lie. Would you risk your job to just write about your actual experience and expose him for who he really was? No. You couldn’t do that, you needed this job. So you went home to your boyfriend.

But your boyfriend wasn’t there. He came home about two hours late. 

“What happened, Mark?” You sat up in the bed and watched him take his work uniform off. 

“Oh, nothing, y/n. The boss just kept me late to finish up some work.”

Mark was lying through his teeth and you knew it. You had your suspicions for a few months now, for he always came home late with that excuse. But you ignored your feelings for tonight, you just wanted him to cuddle you as you complained about your “interview” with one of the worst celebrities alive.

Mark held you close and comforted you as you told him your worries of being bad at your job. He listened carefully, but thought about how he had planned to tell you the truth. He wasn’t working at all. He was staying home with another woman during the day, doing an online job and spending time with her while he made money. She was pregnant and Mark knew that he would have to break the news to you, but he couldn’t, not now while you were at your lowest.

He rubs your back as you fall asleep.

————

[The Next Day]

“Breaking News. There’s been a massive accident on Highway 15. Several injuries and possible deaths are being reported. We are on standby as we gain more information from those at the scene.”

You look up from your computer in your cubicle and at the TV above you.

“Coming to you live from exit 45, it seems that there is a car on fire and an overturned tour bus. Upon closer inspection. It seems that it is the tour bus of none other than pop star, Haechan.”

Your eyes widen. Gasps fill the room as everyone watches the live footage from the scene.

“As of now, we are unsure if Haechan is in the bus..”

The reporter continues, but your focus shifts to the car on fire.

“Oh my God, y/n, what if—“ Lisa starts but you shush her with your finger in the air. 

Your brows furrow as you stand up and take a closer look.

A red Dodge Challenger...the car on fire is a red Dodge Challenger.

No. 

You take a closer look at the license plate and see ‘WTERMLN.’ That’s his personalized license plate. 

You pull your phone out and dial Mark. But there’s no answer. Lisa places her hand in yours and squeezes it. “Y/n..I’m sure he’s fine.”

You dial him over and over again but still no answer. You watch in horror as they begin to pull bodies out from the cars and the bus, they’re covered but your heart aches. 

“Breaking news. It has been confirmed that Haechan is of the casualties lost from this terrible accident.”

While the office cries out in a collective “no!,” You run out to the bathroom and start to cry by yourself.

“Mark..please answer.”

But he doesn’t, and a few hours later, you get a call from the hospital informing you that Mark was also killed in the accident.

———

[1 Week Later]

Days go by and you mourn Mark’s death. You can’t fathom that he’s really gone. Your apartment feels strange and empty. And his family didn’t make things any easier, they didn’t speak with you or tell you anything. They acted like you were some stranger.

“You’re not invited to the funeral, we are sorry.” You hear Mark’s mother say over the phone and before you can ask why, the line goes dead. Tears flow from your face like a waterfall. How could they do this to you? Did they really dislike you this much?

The world mourned Haechan’s death, everyone was shocked, vigils were held everywhere in the world. From Brazil to Japan, and Ghana to Turkey. He had a massive impact on the world as musicians from all over covered his songs and sang them on YouTube or in the streets for live entertainment.

Everywhere you went, you saw RIP posters or T shirts with his face on them. His album was released early and topped the charts in all countries. The world was grieving but finding comfort in his music.

But none of that mattered to you, you were truly alone, left to an empty apartment and crowded with memories of your moments with Mark.

They wouldn’t even let you into the hospital because Haechan was there too and there was so much ruckus with the media. The deaths of everyone else never made the news. It was all about Haechan. And that made you even more upset. They painted him out to be some perfect angel, if only they knew what a jerk he was.

———

[Two Weeks Later]

Your family and friends did the best they could to help you move on, but you just couldn’t. 

Everything reminded you of Mark, you couldn’t eat or sleep properly.

One day as you jogged through the park to clear your mind, you ran into an old woman by accident. 

You had been staring at the fountain that you and Mark used to sit at while eating treats from the food trucks nearby. You didn’t see her standing in the walkway throwing pieces of bread to ducks.

“Oh, I am SO sorry.” You reach out to help her up, but she only laughed. 

“That is okay, dear..” she gasped as she stared deeply into your eyes, her curly white hair fell into her face. She quickly moved it out of the way and continued to stare at you intently. Her brows furrowed.

“Dear...you are in pain, so much pain.”

You gasped as your mouth fell open. She read you like an open book and your eyes weren’t even red from crying.

“I-“ you stuttered.

“I can help you, I am a psychic, come to this address, tonight at 7. I will help you.” She quickly handed you a card. You look down at it in your hand then looked back up to respond but by the time you looked up, she had already started walking away. You stepped towards her.

“Ma’am?” 

Then suddenly a bicyclist ran right in front of you, stopping you in your tracks. You lost sight of her and turned to head home. You thought about how strange everything was, but even more strange was your desire to actually show up to her place.

You were welcomed in exactly at 7.

The door creaked as did the floor once you stepped inside.

“Dear..I am so happy you came.”

“What is this about? How can you help me?”

You looked around the strange cabin decorated with beads and distinct ornaments hanging from the ceiling.

“You’ve lost someone dear to you, haven’t you? Mark..that’s his name.” She said as she sat down at a table in the center of the room.

Your mouth fell open. “How do you..how do you know that?”

“I’m a psychic, I see things.” She said with a wide smile.

You raised your brows. “Yet, you couldn’t see me running towards you this morning.”

She laughed out. “I see MOST things. Take a seat.”

You sat down across from her.

“What if I told you that you could bring him back and be happy again?”

“No..no that’s not possible.” You shake your head.

“But it is, dear. And I’m gonna show you how.”

“This isn’t right, don’t get me wrong..I miss him..I miss him so much, but I can’t do this.”

You swallowed hard as you started to tear up.

“Why not? Death took him away too soon, right? He’s a young man, he deserves a second chance at life and you deserve to be loved.” The old lady held her hands out. “Here, take my hands.”

You thought about what she had said, could this be possible? Could you be reunited with Mark?

It sounded too good to be true. But you were desperate. You held her hands.

“My father passed away when I was just two years old. But I grew up with him right in front of my very own eyes. My mother was able to bring him back to life so he could be with her and raise me. It is possible, I’ve seen it work firsthand and I want to provide you with this opportunity so you will no longer feel the pain that my mother felt.”

“Why? Why do you want to help me? You don’t even know me.” 

“Because..I know that I have a way to make things right.” She reaches under the table and picks up what looks like a piece of granite stone. It has strange writing on it in a language you don’t understand.

“I can’t sit by and watch people suffer.”

“What is this?”

“Listen carefully, this is what you must do. Take this tablet to your dwelling, keep it on a table in the room that the two of you spent your most time in. Surround it with objects that Mark used most when he was alive, then light five candles and repeat these words five times.” 

She hands you a crumpled up piece of paper.

“You must say this sternly, do not falter or have weakness, or it will not work.”

“But what if—“ you still stare at the rock in confusion.

“You must do this at 8:23 tonight for it is when the full moon will be at its strongest. It will protect you from other beings that will try to enter our world.”

“Wait, other beings?..”

A harsh knock fills the room. You look behind her and see a door with all sorts of bolts and chains on it from the bottom to the top. She moved to the side to block your view of it.

“You must leave now!.” She jumps up from her chair and grabs your hand.

“Oh! Okay!” You walk hurriedly to the door as she practically pushes you towards it.

“May you be blessed, my child.”

“Thank-“ the door shuts in your face and you hear the lock turn.

You think about all that’s happened and wonder if you should really try to bring him back.

You decide to sit in the center of the living room by the coffee table, where you would play video games with Mark, and lay out items that reminded you of him. His favorite hat, his watermelon charm, and several pictures of the two of you together.

You turn all of the lights in the apartment off after you’ve lit five candles as instructed.

You sighed as you sat down. “Please bring him back to me, I love him.”

You place your hands over the tablet and read the words on the paper out loud, in your best imitation of Latin.

“Anima corpori, fuerit corpus totem resurgent.”

You repeat it four more times. The flames go out.

A gust of wind blows through your apartment, causing your blinds to shake and your hair to blow forward slightly.

Your eyes widen as you sit in the darkness.

You sit in silence and wait for the unknown. Would he just pop up? Would he knock at your door? Did you say “copori” or “corpori”?

You breathe heavily and sit for about 2 minutes in the darkness, trying not to shake as you feel the air become crisp and freezing. You jump up from the floor and turn your lights on.

Nothing’s changed. You search around the apartment and don’t find him, so you begin to feel a sense of defeat. With tears in your eyes you take a shower then fall asleep. How could you be so desperate? You felt like a fool, there was no way this crazy old lady knew what she was talking about, she just wanted to see you act like a fool.

He was never coming back, you had to accept that.

———

[The Next Day]

You’re woken up by glass breaking.

You hop out of your bed and grab your baseball bat that Mark gave you for protection.

Someone had broken into your apartment. You quietly around the corner with your back against the wall.

When you peak out, you see that your door was hanging from its hinges. Your mouth fell open. Whoever this was, was clearly big and hefty, powerful enough to break down your freaking door.

What damage could this baseball bat do?

You heard grumbling and groaning sounds as the person shuffled through your fridge.

You stepped closer with your bat in hand.

But when you got a closer look, you saw that the person was small, slim and...grey.

They smelled too, like raw meat from the butchers market or more specifically, rotting flesh. 

“Hey!” You called out and swung your bat up high.

They spun around quickly. Your eyes widened in shock.

It was leather jacket wearing...Haechan?

He grabbed the bat from you, snapping it in two before throwing it across the apartment.

He was incredibly strong, but you couldn’t focus as he then grabbed your ankles and pinned you onto the kitchen counter.

“FOOD!” He yelled.

His eyes were of a white color, like he was blind, his face was a mix of purple, green, blue and grey, and bone in his neck stuck out of his skin. He looked—dead.

His fingers were frigid cold as he gripped your skin.

You looked in horror at him, confused. Had he not been holding you, you probably would’ve lost all feeling in your legs at the sight of him and collapsed onto the floor. 

“Haechan?? How is this..how is this possible?”

“GIVE ME FOOD.” He yells again as green spit oozes out of his eyes and mouth, you nearly pass out from his smell.

“Let go!!” You yell.

“IM HUNGRY.” He dashes his arms across the counter in one sweep, causing all of your utensils to scatter across the floor. 

“Okay, okay! Um..I..I don’t have anything here..oh my God what the fuck is happening?”

Between the mess in your kitchen and Haechan sounding like the Hulk while looking like something from the Walking Dead, you didn’t know what to do. Was it possible that you accidentally brought Haechan back instead of Mark?

“BURGER.” Haechan grabs you by the collar and groans.

You nod quickly. “Okay! There’s a McDonald’s down the street, I’ll be right back, um.. stay here.”

Haechan shakes his head violently. “RAW..RAW.”

“Okay! You like it raw, I get it, you can let me go now!” You fling your freezer door open and shuffle through your collection of ice cream, hoping to find a frozen package of beef.

Haechan bangs on the counter and grumbles as you search.

“Found it!” You quickly hand him the package and watch as he tears the plastic cover off and devours the raw meat.

Your face crinkles in disgust. What have you done?

About thirty minutes pass and Haechan slowly starts to look and smell better. His eyes have cleared and returned to their brown color, the green and purplish veins no longer stick out as his skin returns to its normal, warm color. He looks more like a human than a monster. However, the bone in his neck still sticks out.

This all felt like a dream...or nightmare, rather.

“Where am I?” He opens his eyes slowly.

You hand him a napkin to clean up the blood and meat around his mouth.

“You’re at my apartment..Um..do you remember me?”

He squints as he stares at you. “I don’t remember much..”

You step closer. “What do you remember?”

“I remember the music, the crowds, my mother..my father.. but that’s it.”

Your brows raise. “You don’t remember who you are? You’re Haechan, you have the biggest ego in the land, you treat people like crap and you even told me I meant nothing.”

“What? I did that? But why?” Haechan looks so surprised, you can’t help but feel sorry for him. He rubs his neck, wincing at the pain he feels when he brushes his palm over the exposed bone. “Why does my neck hurt?”

You shake your head. “It wasn’t supposed to be you..” you whisper quietly.

“What?” 

“You’re only here...because I summoned you. There was a big accident a few weeks ago and..you died..my boyfriend died too. I was desperate..I tried to bring him back.” You sighed and closed your eyes. “I’m an idiot. Because now I’ve brought you back instead.”

“I DIED?” Haechan sits forward.

“Yeah, but you were a dick, I just want my Mark back, not you.” You turn away from him, he looks up with sad eyes.

“I don’t remember who I was before, but I apologize for whatever I did.” His tone was so sweet, he was virtually unrecognizable from the man you interviewed. 

“That’s fine, Haechan, but you’re missing the point. You’re back now and I don’t know what to do with you. You can’t leave because then everyone will wonder how you’re alive again especially after they’ve spent so much time mourning you.” You rub your temple.

“Woahhh. I was a superstar?” 

“Yes, a superstar I hated.” 

“I don’t feel so good.” Haechan clutches his stomach.

You stand up straight. “What do you mean?”

“I feel..sick.” He starts to rock back and forth, you start to see the color drain from his hands and face. His tone becomes deeper, he starts to sound more and more like he did before he ate.

“Shit..it’s happening again.” 

Haechan groans and grabs onto the table as he transforms back into what seems to be his zombie form.

“Need..to EAT.”

“Oh my God, your appetite is crazy.” You rush to your freezer and find a frozen chicken. 

You turn around to toss it to him, but Haechan is already behind you, he growls and grabs the chicken from your hands.

With wide eyes, you watch him devour yet another piece of raw meat.

When he’s done he sits back in the chair and lets out a loud belch. You chuckle as his cute and handsome face returns to normal.

But you couldn’t ignore the fact that you truly had no idea what to do with him.

“You can kill me..since you hate me.” Haechan says softly while staring at the table.

“What is this..thing I’ve become..I don’t know why it’s happening, but when the hunger kicks in, I feel like eating everything to satisfy it. My mind goes blank, I can’t even form normal thoughts. I only see red. I’m sorry for doing this to you, I’m sorry for breaking in.”

Your heart breaks when you hear him apologize and look up at you somberly. “No..it’s not your fault. It’s mine, and I won’t kill you. I’ll find a way. I have to find her.” You pick your bag up and grab your car keys.

“Where are you going?” He stands up fast.

“Stay here, I have to find the lady that got me into this shit.”

———

You bang against her door. “Open the door, lady!”

After a few minutes, she reluctantly opens the door. “Yes?”

You push yourself into her house.

“Hey!” She yells to try to stop you.

“What the hell? You set me up!”

She scoffs. “I did no such thing! I gave you the tools you needed.”

“I have a zombie in my apartment! He goes berserk, like full frickin monster mode when he doesn’t eat raw meat for just 30 minutes! Do you know how crazy this is?!”

“Oh, dear, I’m sorry, you must not have done the spell correctly.”

“No! No, don’t blame this on me, I know you gave me that cursed tablet because you didn’t want it in your house anymore! I knew it was too good to be true but I trusted you! And I have no fucking clue why!”

You stepped closer to her as you yelled.

“You have to fix this!”

Her face fell. She had no idea that you would’ve suspected she was trying to use you to get rid of her curse, but you were right.

She sighs. “Dear...there is no way to get rid of this curse..it is final.”

“Final my ass! I should’ve brought him here so he can eat YOU! But you’d probably taste like shit because you’re full of it!” 

A loud groan and beastly sound comes out from behind that same door.

“Shhh!! Lower your voice!” She places her finger on your mouth.

Your brows furrow. “Is that...your dad?”

She looks to the floor. “It’s..my son.” 

The beast wails loudly.

“I thought...if I gave you the tablet, he would be released from this curse..but I was wrong. He doesn’t seem to be getting any better.”

“Are you serious? You knew about this..you knew what would happen, yet you let me do it too?” You scoffed.

She nods. “I am sorry, dear, but let me help you.”

She walks to her kitchen and brings back a large jar of lavender colored powder.

“If you mix 1 teaspoon of this powder with water and give it to him every day..he will be “normal” for 24 hours.”

“And what happens when it runs out? How do I stop him from eating everyone and everything in sight?” You snap back.

“I will be here, come back to me and I’ll give you more but this should last you for at least a year.”

“Really? So you’re telling me that there’s 365 teaspoons worth in this jar? Also, why don’t you use it on your son?”

She closes her eyes. “I’ve been doing this for twenty years, I’ve experimented with him, trying to find a permanent solution, however, when I cast a spell on him, it gave his body and mind a tolerance to this potion, meaning that it no longer has an effect on him.”

“Where do you get this from?”

She chuckles and opens her eyes as she looks out of a window. “From the fairies...they do not wish to be seen, but if you offer them something, they will leave a gift.”

You take the jar from her. “I am going to try this..if it doesn’t work, I’ll be back and I’ll be sure to bring him.”

“I hope that you and your lover can live peacefully in the end, dear.”

“Oh, that’s the thing, he’s not my lover.” you roll your eyes and slam her door shut.

———

[2 Months Later]

Living with zombie Haechan was..interesting. The potion worked and Haechan didn’t have those crazed hunger pings that turned him into a monster straight out of an 80s film. 

You were thankful that he wasn’t like who he was before the accident, an ignorant asshole. He was incredibly sweet and helpful. He didn’t speak much because of his decaying brain, but he kept you company and helped to clean.

You bought him clothes and eventually replaced them with Mark’s, for you couldn’t bear to see his things anymore.

You’d leave for work and come home to see him fixing things like the cabinet doors he broke.

“I don’t remember much, but I do remember my father..he never liked to watch me sing at school..he’d rather I have a hammer in my hand. He taught me how to fix most things when I was just 7 years old. But my mother..she supported everything I did..I miss her.”

Haechan said quietly as you both ate dinner. You ate spaghetti and meatballs, he ate the same thing but the uncooked version of course.

You felt a slight pain in your heart as you thought about how this must’ve been for him. Surely, he would want to console his mother and tell her that he’s okay, but he couldn’t.

You helped him dye his hair a dark red color and gave him a new haircut. His luscious licks were now gone, but if he wanted to go outside, he’d have to look different than he did before.

So you bought him round glasses and a scarf to wear to conceal his broken neck bone whenever you went to the supermarket together.

You still missed Mark, but you had been so busy with caring for Haechan that you sometimes forget the loss and pain.

You cleared your throat and thought of something quickly to distract Haechan from thinking about his mother.

“What is something that you would like to do? For example, I’m sure you couldn't go ice skating when you were famous right?”

Haechan chews and looks up to his right as he tries to remember. “I don’t think I’ve ever done that.”

“Would you like to?” You say with hopeful eyes.

Haechan chuckles and smiles at you, making your heart run wild. What was this feeling? Why did he make your chest weak?

Was it this new undercut that he had? Or perhaps the dazzling smile paired with beautiful eyes and a dainty nose?

“When I’m here alone, I watch TV and I saw an advertisement for..the fair?” He asks innocently.

“Oh! You want to go to the fair?” Your eyes widen.

“Yes.” He nods.

———

[The Next Day]

Haechan tightens his scarf around his neck tightly before the two of you get on the next ride.

“I like this one a lot, we used to ride it over and over, me and M-“ you stop before saying his name.

“Mark?” Haechan sees your hesitancy. He wishes you wouldn’t be in pain over his death anymore. He didn’t like seeing you like this, he wanted you to be happy, especially when you were around him, for your smile felt like a garden of bright flowers had bloomed simultaneously.

“Yeah..” you hold your head down.

The man at the ride lets the two of you on. It’s the pirate ship that swings back and forth, rotating you guys upside down as you scream your heads off.

Haechan holds onto you for dear life as you are flipped over in the air and held there for nearly 5 seconds.

You giggle while he screams and closes his eyes tightly.

When the ride is finally over, you jump up from your seat and take his hand in yours. He freezes and stares at your hand. It was the first time you had touched him. He felt sparks fly from your beautiful fingers to decorate his skin.

“Come on!” You say excitedly while beaming.

He smiles like he’s just seen gold and jumps up from his seat as well.

The two of you continue on through the fair, going on the worst rides just so you can laugh at how Haechan suffers through them.

After about an hour and a half, you decide to get some to eat.

Haechan looks up at the menu from a food truck. 

“Uhhh..do you have anything...uncooked?”

“Uncooked? Like..raw?” The chef looks at him with concern.

“Yeah. Like just a turkey leg..without the smoke?”

You run up to him after leaving the restroom. You can see from the puzzled look on the man’s face that the conversation doesn’t seem to be going well.

“It’s for our dog!” You quickly exclaim while wrapping your arm around Haechan’s. He once again felt soft from your touch. He loved being close to you, seeing you smile, feeling your warmth and love. The two of you had grown close as time went by, and even though he slept on your couch, he’d never felt more at home.

The man nods and hands Haechan a raw turkey leg. You get a hot dog and lead Haechan to a corner of the park where he can eat his food without being watched.

The two of you ate quickly as you hid, the sun was starting to set and you were growing tired.

“No one seems to recognize you!” You take a bite of your hot dog.

Haechan nods.

“It’s the haircut..thank you, by the way.”

You nod. “You’re welcome, sunny.”

Haechan stops chewing, his eyes widen. Did you just come up with a cute nickname for him?

A piece of meat dangles from his mouth.

You giggle as he stares. “What? Don’t choke now.”

He quickly chews and swallows. “Why ‘sunny?’’

You shrug your shoulders. “Hmmm i don’t know,..you’re bright..like the sun!”

Haechan blushes. “You think I’m bright?”

“When you’re not full monster mode, yeah..”

“What can I call you then...hmmm...sweet pea!”

You chuckle and throw your head back. Haechan’s smile widens.

“Sweet pea?”

“Yes! Because you’re sweet and small like a pea,”

Haechan teases and steps closer to you.

“I am NOT small.” You wave a finger.

“You’re shorter than me so…”

You laugh and turn away from his strong gaze. “well, I guess you have …”

You stop in your tracks when you recognize the brown haired man stepping out of the restrooms.

No, it couldn’t be.

You walk up to him and tap his shoulder.

“Mark?”

Haechan follows behind you. 

Mark turns to you slowly, gulping as he feels your touch.

“Y/n.. I can explain.”

You step back and bump into Haechan while covering your face with shaking hands.

“What’s wrong?” Haechan asks.

Mark steps forward.

“I-I..wait, it worked after all?” You tear up.

“What—are you talking about?” Mark’s brows furrow.

“You died and I brought you back to life..but..”

Mark shakes his head, thinking that you aren’t handling his “death” well.

“Y/n..no..I didn’t die..I faked my death, I’m sorry..I-I had to.”

“What?!” Your hands fall from your face.

“Baby, who’s this?” A pregnant woman walks up to Mark while holding her back and wincing in pain.

“This is..y/n.”

She holds her hand out for you to shake, but you glare at Mark.

“Baby? Mark, what...is this..are you messing with me right now? Am I on camera? Haha very funny, jokes over.” You hold your hands out and look around you for the cameras, for none of this made sense.

Mark sighs. “Y/n..I was going to tell you, but I couldn’t. I cheated on you with her and got her pregnant. I got into the accident but left the vehicle as fast as I could and escaped the fire. Im fine but..I told everyone to tell you that I died.”

You chuckled and bent over.

“I’m serious..I needed to start over..without you.” He continued.

You stand up straight with tears flowing down your cheeks. “Was I that bad, Mark? Was I that worthless?” Your voice cracked.

“Did I mean nothing to you?” 

Mark shook his head. “No..you were everything to me. Which is why I did what I did like a coward, I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“Do you have any fucking idea how much I cried over you? What I DID for you?” Your voice starts to raise.

Mark’s mouth falls open into silence, for there is truly no excuse for his shitty actions.

“You’re a lying bastard and I wish you nothing but the pain I felt when I thought you were dead.” Upset wasn’t even a strong enough word to describe your feeling right now.

Haechan also grows upset when he sees how hurt you are.

“You know what? I’m really hungry right now.” Haechan stepped forward, a low growl escaping him. You stepped in front of him and held his hand. 

“No..”

“You look familiar…” the woman beside Mark speaks as she looks at Haechan.

“And you look like the whore my boyfriend, wait, EX boyfriend knocked up! Come on, let’s get out of here.” You took Haechan’s hand and led him out of the park.

You drove in silence, a million thoughts running through your head. Once again, you felt like a fool.

Later that night, you crawled into bed and sobbed quietly, but Haechan heard you.

He opened your door slowly. 

“Sweet pea?” He says softly in the darkness.

You can’t help but laugh when you hear the nickname.

Haechan smiles when he hears it.

“Yes, sunny.”

“Do you need a hug?”

You roll over onto your back and swipe at your eyes. “Yes, please.”

Haechan climbs into your bed and pulls you into his arms tightly. You place your hands over his as he rests his chin on top of your head, and the two of you fall asleep soon after.

The next day, you wake up to Haechan rustling through your pantry.

He wails and groans loudly. You jump out of bed.

“Shit. I’m late.” 

You run out to the kitchen, Haechan tosses things out of the fridge while green and purple veins bulge from his grey skin. His hair is messy and great and he sounds demonic as he screams. You dodge his thrashing arms and quickly mix the potion for him.

You hold his head and keep him still with both hands.

“Haechan! Drink! Now!” You look into his white eyes.

You grab the glass and pour the liquid into his mouth. 

24 hours was up from about 30 minutes before you woke up. You had to be on time or Haechan would quickly change into zombie mode and could potentially leave the apartment to find someone to eat. This was the downside to having him around. But it was your curse and you had to deal with it.

You always thought it fascinating how he never tried to eat you.

Haechan calms down and sits onto the floor while panting.

He holds your hand and looks up at you with teary eyes. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry ..I’ll clean this up, I promise.”

“It’s okay, Haechan.” You sigh and head back to bed.

———

[Three Months Later]

You and Haechan live together happily, you slowly get closer, sleeping together in bed on most nights and doing coupling things like going to the movies or taking dancing lessons. 

He helped you get over Mark, he made you feel so loved. 

He couldn’t talk much so he was unable to get a regular job. But one day, the two of you walked by a floral shop. Haechan stopped walking and stared at the lilies. They were beautiful.

“They’re beautiful, aren’t they?”

You smiled as you touched the flowers.

“Yeah..Like you.”

You felt your face become warm as he stared into your eyes.

“I like flowers, which explains why I like you.”

Haechan says smoothly.

“You like me?” You say giddily and tug his hand.

Haechan rolls his eyes. “You’re cute.”

“What if you worked at a place like this since you like flowers?”

He nods “I’d love that.”

And so, you spoke to the owner and helped him get a job there. Of course, he’d have to wear his scarf to conceal his “scar,” but other than that, he would have no issue with preparing bouquets and cleaning up.

He’d bring home flowers for you all the time, making you smile and forget all about the pain you felt months ago.

——

“Sunny!” You cry out as Haechan flips you over his shoulder and takes you to the bathroom.

“Ha! I love hearing you call my name, baby.”

He helps you into the shower then steps in with you.

“Ah! I don’t have much time..”

“I know, that’s why I’m going to help you shower..”

He rubs you down with body wash, slowly caressing your body as you fall weak in his hands.

His touch was soothing, gentle..

“Are you sure you don’t want to call out sick today?”

He whispers into your ear as his hands trail down your abdomen.

You turn to him and kiss him for the first time. It felt like you were skydiving, falling through the blue sky without any indication of stopping, you felt a rush so indescribable your mind went blank.

Haechan can only think of how beautiful you are, he doesn’t want this moment to ever end. You’re refreshing and his chest feels like a hundred butterflies are roaming around freely in it.

He kisses you back slowly tracing his tongue over your lips. You inhale each other’s breath, closing your eyes and adoring the warmth of each other’s skin.

When you have finished showering together, Haechan carries you to the room and lays you down onto the bed. He crawls over you and lays his lips back onto yours while gently pressing his hands onto your sides.

You moan and hold yourself up on your elbows. 

You hold his face in between your hands while you kiss for what feels like hours. He gives your thighs a light squeeze.

You widen your legs and fall back into the bed.

“I don’t have much time, go ahead.” You say breathily into his ear.

He bites his bottom lip. “Are you sure?”

You nod. “Absolutely.”

He pushes into you slowly, merging your bodies in the bright room and on the plush bed for the first time.

You gripped his shoulders and wrapped your legs around his waist. Your fingers trailed up to his soft hair as he kissed your neck.

It felt magical, unreal, you felt like you had a small piece of heaven during your moment together.

Haechan whispers “I love you.” as the two of you lay in bed after.

“Is that code for “call in sick so we can do it again”?” You tease him before kissing his nose.

——

[6 Months Later]

You were running out of time to find more powder for your solution. You tried not to be worried in front of Haechan but he knew you were.

You were both worried about the future of your relationship.

You headed to the old lady’s cabin, hoping to get more.

But when you reached the exact spot, you were frightened to see an empty area littered with black dust.

“No..this can’t be..what the-?”

“Can I help you, ma’am?” A man on a bicycle passing by asked you.

“Yes, where is the cabin that was here?”

“You’re looking at it, honey. There was a fire about three months ago. The sweet old lady that lived in it passed away after inhaling too much smoke..”

Your mouth fell open as you searched the area. This couldn’t be real. How would you get the solution now?

———

[A Few Days Later]

You searched the Internet long and hard for a solution but found nothing. You were playing a dangerous game by shortening the amount you gave him, in hopes that it would last longer and give you more time.

But instead of the effects lasting for 24 hours, they’d only last for 18 before he started to grumble while the two of you laid in bed together. 

You’d quickly grab some meat from the closest supermarket and feed it to him, but that also meant that you couldn’t sleep at night.

“Hey..you’ve been at it all day. What are you looking for?” Lisa asks you one day at work.

The truth was, you couldn’t tell anyone about your predicament.

“I..it’s nothing, it’s just some old recipe I’m looking for.”

“Oh really? What’s it called?”

“I’m not sure, my mom used to make it, but it involves some pretty scarce materials.”

“Ohhhh..sounds interesting, well, what I can tell you is that when I did research on the dark web, I found a website that included weird stuff like 16th century recipes for potions and shit, it was crazy. They’d be like “you must drink four quarts of animal blood for this to work.” Wild.” Lisa shook her head and went back to her desk.

What if you needed to delve deeper into the internet, what if you searched for the potion on the dark web? 

No, you couldn’t, you’d just be asking for trouble.

Later that day when you went to pick Haechan up from your work, you saw that the shop had been destroyed, glass and flowers were scattered all over. The door had been ripped off and thrown across the floor.

You stepped out of the car but was stopped by the owner.

“Get out of here! You’re the reason for this! What the hell is wrong with your boyfriend? Look at what he did to her!” The owner pointed to another worker at the shop.

She was whimpering and holding out her arm. When you looked closely, you saw that she had been bitten. A chunk of her arm was missing. Your eyes widened as you backed away.

The potion..it wore off.

“Oh no..” barely left your lips.

“He was eating her like a maniac! I came just in time to run him out!”

The owner yelled as you jumped back into your car.

You drove around the area looking for him. You're on the brink of a full meltdown. What if he had attacked someone else? What if the police tried to get him and failed? How many more people could he hurt? 

You had to find him...now. 

You parked the car and ran around a park nearby. It was relatively quiet until you heard bones cracking. You snapped your head in the direction of the sound and rushed towards it.

You heard the high pitched cry of an animal. You peered through the bushes and saw a terrifying scene.

Haechan guzzles down the meat of a deer. He grumbles and makes demonic sounds as the deer’s eyes close slowly.

“Haechan..” you croak out quietly.

His head snaps up towards you while he still devours the intestines of the poor animal.

“Haechan..stop.. please..” you start to tear up. Your lover is unrecognizable in front of you, grey and purple skin and black fingernails. His mouth and chin is covered in blood and guts and his teeth are nearly fully decayed and yellow. His hair falls from his scalp like leaves fall from a tree.

He stands up slowly as he finally comes to realize who you are. He steps towards you but you don’t back away, you only stand there and cry.

“I’m sorry..I’m sorry I couldn’t help you in time.” 

You sob.

He breathes heavily and looks into your eyes, he’s confused because he doesn’t feel the need to feed on you, he feels like...crying, and the monster doesn’t know why.

You take him to your car and drive him home while he eats what’s left of the deer. The last thing you wanted was a dead deer in your car, but it was the only thing that kept him from thrashing around and being dangerous towards you. Once there, you use chains to tie him to a chair. You pour out the final teaspoon of powder and mix the drink.

He yells and groans as you give it to him to drink. You had never seen him this bad before. He has holes in his grey skin and his veins are now black. He was decaying faster than ever before.

His eyes were completely white and he spat out black blood as he yelled and strained against the chains.

“Haechan..please..baby it’s me, sweet pea..” you give a small smile.

But he doesn’t stop yelling.

You try to force the liquid down his throat but he coughs it up and spits it out.

“Haechan! No!!” You watch as the last bit of potion splatters onto the floor

You fall onto the floor and sob into your hands. What could you do now?

You remembered a conversation that you two had a few months ago.

“Should I threaten your safety or the safety of anyone else..you must kill me..” Haechan says while squeezing your hand and looking up at the stars.

You laid on the roof of your apartment building and watched the stars together.

“What are you saying..you know I can’t kill you.” You chuckle.

“Y/n...I’m serious...I am a monster, and if I lose control..” he shakes his head. “I can’t bear to think that I could hurt you. So you have to stab me in the head, that’s the only way.”

“You’re being ridiculous. I’d never do that.”

He turns to you and holds your chin in his hand while looking deep into your eyes. “Sweet pea..I love you, but please take care of yourself first.”

You raised your head as you sat at his feet now, the man in front of you being completely different from the man beside you on the roof long ago on that night.

“I love you too, sunny.” You cried harder and stood up. There was no going back, you couldn’t find any solutions and he was only getting worse. You loved him but he was right.

He lets out a loud groan as you walk past him and to the kitchen.

You take out a sharp knife and close your eyes before driving it into his skull.

The wailing stops.

You fall to the floor again and cry. 

———

[The Next Day]

You wake up and see Haechan’s lifeless body slumped over.

You miss him so much, your feeling of desperation begins to creep in again. And so, you jump onto your laptop and get to the dark web.

You scroll through many websites, some leading to porn websites, some leading to games with jump scares, and some just leading to flat out dead ends.

But as time goes on, you get closer and closer to what you need, finding websites about satanic rituals and sacrifices.

You eventually find a resurrection spell.

With nothing to lose, you take the knife out of his head and lay him down on the floor. You set the stage and prepared for another ritual, you should’ve learned from what happened the first time, but you loved him dearly, you needed him.

“I call upon the ancient power to help me in the darkest hour… with a drop of my blood…” you use a small knife to cut into the center of your hand. You wince from the pain and squeeze your hand to let drops fall onto his forehead.

“I will heal this man with all my love..” you say a few more words in Latin and close your eyes.

When you are done, it’s silent in your apartment, but your eyes are still closed.

Then you hear it.

You hear a breath leave his lips.

He sits up straight suddenly and opens his eyes. You gasp and watch as his skin heals and his eyes turn to brown. His teeth are back to being bright and white and his hair is luscious.

He smiles when he sees you. “Sweet pea..”

You grin with tears in your eyes.

“Sunny!” You got to hug him, but his body disappears and you fall to the floor.

Your smile fades, you hold yourself up from the floor and look behind you. Haechan sits there with a look of confusion.

“Y/n..”  he holds his hand up.

You sit back up in front of him and place your hand on his, but your fingers fall through thin air, failing to grasp his hand.

You didn’t read the fine print..the terms and conditions. This spell only worked for you to be able to see someone that has died, not for you to touch them.

“Haechan..I’m so sorry.” You begin to cry but he touched your cheek, it comes off as a light gust of wind.

“Don’t cry, sweet pea..I’m here..with you.”

And he stayed with you as a ghost for the rest of your life. He comforted you even though you couldn’t feel each other. You still explored the world together, watched movies and slept together. You missed his warmth and he missed yours, but seeing your beautiful face was enough for him. Even as you aged while he stayed the same, he thought you were the prettiest woman to ever grace the Earth.

And when you too had passed, you joined him as a ghost, walking hand in hand as you roamed the world.

come back tomorrow for the next spooky story...

#nct 2020 #nct haechan #haechan x y/n #haechan x reader #haechan x you #haechan smut #donghyuck smut #donghyuck #lee donghyuck #haechan angst #haechan fluff #nct halloween #nct halloween blurb #donghyuck blurbs #donghyuck imagines #donghyuck angst #nct x you #nct x reader #nct x y/n #haechan #nct imagine #nct romance #nct scenario #nct boyfriend #nct aesthetic #haechan aesthetic #donghyuck fanfic #donghyuck x you #donghyuck x reader #nct hard hours

[do-y0u-have-to-let-it-linger]

EXT. The Roof (Winter) - Sunset

Not Just Attracted to Women!Peter Maximoff x Fem and Not Just Attracted to Men!Reader

Based off of a dream I recently had: Peter and Y/N have a conversation on the roof of Xavier's in mid-December. Peter accidentally lets it slip that he might not be straight, and he is afraid that Y/N will think less of him because of it because this is the 80s. Y/N reveals that she is also not straight, and is saddened by the fact that Peter could think that she could ever hate him- especially for that. She calls him wonderful. Feelings ensue. Also, a touch of Cherik at the end because I give the people what they want.

Warnings: Swearing, Peter cries, internalized homophobia (this is the 80s-ish and Peter uses the word 'queer' in a kind of incorrect and kind of offensive manner, but it was internalized homophobia and not actually intended to be mean to anyone but himself so I forgive him), a touch of angst but mostly fluff, Charles called you two "children" even though you are obviously not, Erik is happy that his son has someone that cares about him the way you do, Peter is insecure but not super blunt about it, Peter has been deprived of being adored his entire life, bad writing, I mention a serial killer twice, historical inaccuracy because the word queer was still a slur so yeah.

A/N: This is literally the first thing I have ever written so please be nice to me, I wrote this instead of an essay. I would love a comment of any kind, even if it's just a heart emoji or something, and constructive criticism would be highly appreciated. Also 'N/N' stands for nick-name.

(Ok, so, full discloser: the format is odd. The bullet points represent dialogue, and the only dialogue is between you two love birds. The first bullet point is Peter, the second is Y/N, the third is Peter, and so on.)

“I dunno, the whole ‘liking people’ thing has always been weird for me.”

“How do you mean?"

“Pppffftt- 'how do you mean,' what are you, Shakespeare or somethin’?”

“Yeah, because that’s the era when ‘how do you mean' would have been a popular term. Ok, what do you mean?”

“Just- when other people were liking people I never really was?”

He was gesturing wildly and avoiding eye contact, as always. He wasn't uncomfortable with eye contact, he just got bored easily in conversations, he needed to keep himself occupied. In this situation that meant staring at the red and green lights covering the rest of the roof, the snowy trees all over the yard, and a holly garland around the gate. Peter wasn't Christian, but man, did he love their Christmas decorations.

“Like… now? In school?”

“Well- yeah… but also when I was younger. And I never liked the right people? Or... liked them in the right way?”

“So you’ve never liked anyone.”

“No, no… I definitely have. It was just… weird! I don't-”

His hands dropped to his side in defeat.

“I don’t think it’s that out of the ordinary. I would tell you if it was. Also, if it was... 'weird', like you said, that wouldn’t mean it was necessarily bad.”

He hadn’t really heard what she said, he was too busy pondering what his next sentence would be. When she wasn't speaking, he was rambling.

"I had some of the normal crap… like in movies when they talk about the fluttery stomach junk. I've had that around a few girls I've been friends with, also that phase with the boy stuff, a-"

“Wait, what phase with the boy stuff?”

“Like- when you’re in middle school or whatever and you're gay for a second.”

His phrasing was a joke, but the statement as a whole was not.

“…‘Gay for a second’?”

“…Yeah?”

“Hmmm..."

"Is that- not-"

"I don't think that is... 'normal'... per-say..."

“Oh… Really?”

His heart sunk.

“…Yeah.”

“Huh.”

“…Mhm.”

“…Shit.”

He suddenly looked almost embarrassed. He shifted his posture, seemingly trying to shrink into himself.

“Do you... wanna chat about it?”

Panic started to slowly rise in him.

“Um- forget I said anything.”

“Why?”

Something in him said to go on the "defense". He did not appear as calm as he was intending to.

“I’m not- gay! or anything. I like girls! I do!”

She put her hand on his arm.

“Hey- look at me for a second. We are not in court, and I never 'accused' you of being gay. That would be a very funny reality TV show, but not what is happening right now. Listen, theoretically if you were gay that wouldn’t be bad! And I wouldn’t be… whatever you.. think that I would be? I mean- however you are afraid I would act in a negative reaction to it? I would try to be here for you, and be as supportive as possible.”

He didn’t believe her.

“Ok, sure.”

“Peter.”

“What? You’re going to tell me that you would honestly be friends with a queer person- be friends with me if I was... not... normal?”

She was taken aback by his tone, the word he had used, and the way he said it, felt like a weight dropping on her shoulders.

“Oh. would you… not?”

It was her turn to seem nervous.

“What?”

“Would you- stop being friends with someone for liking someone that they… I don’t know… shouldn’t... would be the word I guess?”

Why, in this situation, was she nervous? Oh. His fear was replaced with guilt.

“No.”

“Ok.”

“So… are you… do you… why were you scared?”

“... Why were you?”

She expected a joke from him, something along the lines of “touché".

“Are you… gay?”

“No.”

Yeah, he didn’t believe her.

“Uh-huh”

“Really, I’m not. I’ve liked boys, but also... I've had feelings for girls. I’m not… straight. So I just want to let you know that it’s okay if you aren’t too.”

“I never s-“

She smiled at him with a bit of pity, she had been there. The self-loathing, the feeling of walking on minefields with so many people in your life.

“You are…”

She paused.

“I am… what?”

“Give me a second I’m trying to find the perfect word.”

“… Okay?”

“Wonderful.”

That was not exactly the word he was expecting. Like, at all.

“Huh?”

“That’s the word. Wait- let me start over. You gotta look me in my eyes as I say it, because it’s gonna be really poetic.”

“Uh… should I be scared?”

“No. Maybe a little. No.”

“… Okay.”

He looked at her.

“You are… wonderful.”

“Oh... Thanks?“

He looked away again, to be honest, he was a bit uncomfortable. He rarely received compliments, especially ones that seem so... genuine.

“I’m not finished, look back at me, just for a second. You are so wonderful- and I will support you as whatever you are! I want you to know that I can- I can barely even think of something you could do that would make me genuinely hate you- like… maybe if you Dahmer-ed people or like chopped up a-“

He found this was amusing, yet disturbing.

“Y/N?”

“Sorry- I just- the fact that you thought, even for a second, that I could hate you… is just-“

“I’m sorry”

“No! Stop it. Don’t be sorry.”

She stared at him expectantly.

“What do you want me to-“

“Take it back! The sorry!”

“How?”

“Say you aren’t sorry”

“N/N-“

“Peter.”

“Ok. I’m, ya know, not sorry.”

“Good. You shouldn’t be”

“You’re weird.”

“Yuh-huh. Says the most likely, from the little information I've gathered, bisexual in denial who also happens to be the fastest boy on earth who had to slow down exponentially to interact with other people who also, also, happens sitting on a roof in the dead of winter with me.”

“What’s by smexual?”

Something about the way he attempted to repeat her words must have been hilarious, he thought, because here she was, sitting in front of him, in a fit of childish giggles. He would smile if he weren't so confused.

“No- that’s not- what I said- it’s… wait!”

“What?”

“You’re tryna get me off topic!”

“Am not!”

“Are too!”

“Am not!”

“Am not!”

“Are t- shit.”

“HAHA! Victory is a sweet dessert... wait is that even the saying? Still, I win you lose, nerd.”

“Ok, okay! go on.”

She was attempting to gather herself to give off a less jokey aura. It was half working, the "am not! are too!" argument a few moments ago made it hard for him to take her seriously, but he could tell it was important to her that he did, so he tried his best.

“You have to look at me again. just for a second.”

“I sw-”

“Just do it? Please?”

His attempt to put up a fight was thwarted by her small "please". He was pathetic.

“Okay.”

He looked at her.

“You…”

“Me… or- wait- I…”

“Are w-“

“Wonderful, yeah yeah. just get to the n-”

“No.”

“… No?”

“When you say it it doesn’t encapsulate it. It sounds silly.”

“Ok little miss ‘you art thou wonderful’, how would you have me say it?”

“I am you wonderful?”

“What?”

“You called me ‘little miss you are you wonderful’ what does that-“

“Ok! Would you just- shut up and call me wonderful one more time, please?”

She looked at him and blinked. That sentence surely came off as less ironic than intended.

“You are wonderful.”

She grabbed his face, in a half-joking manner. Her grab smushed his cheeks and she couldn't help but laugh a bit when she did it. Even though it was clearly a bit, he was still flustered.

“W-“

She shook him a bit.

"Shut up 'cause I'm about to say some beautiful and true shit. You are wonderful. You are wonderful. You are wonderful. You are absolutely, unchangingly, and irrevocably wonderful and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it, Maximoff.”

After saying what she would (in 40 years or so) recall as a painfully John Green-ish statement in her blunt and matter-of-fact manner, she let go of her semi-ironic hold on his pink cheeks. Were his cheeks pink because it was absolutely freezing, or because his heart was beating faster than he had ever (and would ever, mind you) run, you ask? No comment.

“Wow.”

“Wow what.”

“You do say it better than I do.”

“Did you like how I stressed different parts of the sentence each time? I thought that was a nice detail.”

“Wow.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Wow.”

Did his voice just... break a little?

“Peter?”

“Uh- yeah?”

Was he a little... sniffle-y? She was now very concerned.

“Are you okay?!”

“Oh- um... yeah!”

No! No he was clearly not! He was sniffling!

“Really? 'Cause, you don't seem it.”

“It’s just- I just- wow.”

“Wow, what!?”

“That was just- uh-"

“Just what? It really wasn't that fancy, you seem much too impressed with me. Oh my God, was it terrible?”

“I mean it was really corny but w-“

“I swear to God if you say 'wow' one more time I may have to add ‘use of the word wow too much’ to the list of things that could make me hate you. Right next to the Dahmer stuff. That was a joke. Your use of the word wow is only mildly perturbing. Sorry."

She was panicking "just a bit".

“I’m sorry, I mean I’m not sorry. Sorry. Shit! sorry! I mean I’m not!”

And he was absolutely... full-on crying at this point.

“Peter.”

“Yeah?”

He was looking down at his mittens. Not that this is important, but they were very pretty mittens.

“Look at me, you klepto.”

He didn’t.

“You know- I’ve been hearing a lot of that 'look at me' stuff from you today. I mean- the klepto part is new-“

“Peter.”

“What?!”

He peaked up at her.

“Talk to me. Please, you're kinda scaring me, let me help.”

“I’m not sad!”

“You’re crying!”

“Yeah but not from the sads!”

“… The ‘sads’?”

“You know- when you get sad! It just means being sad! I don't- that’s what Wanda calls it, not me!"

He wiped his nose, tears still running down from his puffy eyes to his reddened cheeks.

“What are you crying from?”

“No one’s ever called me wonderful before.”

“I'm sorry! I did a few minutes ago and you didn’t cry!”

“No! You can't 'sorry' me if I can't 'sorry' you! And- yeah but that doesn’t count!”

“Why?”

“Because it only felt big when you said it the certain way!”

“What way!?”

“You look at me, you grab my cheeks-“

“I'm sorry about that by the way I was j-“

“No! It’s really ok! Do it whenever! I mean don’t do it whene- shut up!”

“I’m not even talking! You're the one talking!”

“You look at me, you grab my cheeks, and you go: you are wonderful.”

“Yeah???”

“No one ever called me that before!”

"Peter, I- well- they- they should! They should! More often! Then the amount that it happens now! I think. In my opinion."

"Or really looked at me like that!”

“Looked at you like what, Peter?”

“Like I was somethin’!”

“Well, you are… ‘somethin'! Whatever that means! And- I think you deserve to be looked at as such!”

“See?”

“What!?”

“You just-“

A strangled sob escaped from his throat. He didn't know how to explain.

“Pete.”

“Ew. I hate that nickname.”

He crossed his arms over his chest like a toddler, trying to completely ignore the fact that he was an emotional wreck.

“Peter.”

“Yeah?”

She opened her arms and gestured for him to come closer. He was hesitant at first- but gave up all the reasons he shouldn't move to be closer to her in exchange for the promise of comfort she was offering him. He crawled over to her and curled up in her arms. The way she held him made him want to cry more. Who does she think she is- holding him like he was worth holding? With her chin sitting on top of his hair? Letting him do that gross cry sob with the spit and the snot into her only winter coat? Rocking him, and shushing him, and petting his stupid, silver hair? She was warm, too! The audacity of this woman.

When Erik brought Charles into his office to grab a chess set, they saw the two in the window. For a moment Charles considered telling Peter and Y/N to get off of the high platform, seeing as the two were the reasons the "no sitting on the roof" rule was enacted in the first place (neither of them were coordinated whatsoever). Charles quickly dropped this notion when he saw the look on Erik's face, Charles could tell it made him so happy to see Peter be held like that, cared for like that. Erik's expression made Charles want to both tell Erik that he is the most precious thing in the world, and make fun of him (look at Mr. Metal, gone completely soft). Possibly he could do both at the same time. But for now, he is just going to pretend he didn't see the two outside of the window, and have Erik grab them their game, go to the living room, and pretend not to have read Erik's mind when he inevitably asks him how he always manages to pick the white chess piece at "random".

#is this even good #i wrote this instead of an essay #peter maximoff #peter maximoff fluff #peter maximoff x reader #me 🤝 commas #me 🤝 ... okay #the quality of this fic 📈📉📈📉📈

[fanfickittycat]

First Glance

TITLE: First Glance

CHAPTER NUMBER/ONE SHOT: One Shot

AUTHOR: fanfickittycat

FANDOM: Haikyuu!!

CHARACTERS/PAIRING: Ushijima Wakatoshi x Reader

GENRE: Romance/Fluff

FIC SUMMARY: Ushijima doesn't know why the girl tasked with covering the team for the school paper won't leave his mind

RATING: G

AUTHORS NOTES/WARNINGS: I’m putting this below the cut but you can also read it on AO3 here

“Is she back already?” Ushijima didn’t flinch when Tendo joined his side, only nodding stoically in response. He was observing the girl with such rapt attention, that Tendo was genuinely surprised; usually, Ushijima only had eyes for volleyball. Girls seemed to be out of the question. Even when the topic of girls was brought up in the locker room, he never paused to pass comment. In fact, he didn’t look like he was even listening to the conversation, instead methodically doing up the buttons on his shirt or neatly folding his kit.

“I hear she’s from the journalism club” he said, watching his friend’s face carefully for any changes in his features. The day had been so boring, and finally something interesting was happening. “Hmmm”. Nothing. “I guess she must want to cover the team going to the finals.” “Hmmm.” Nothing again. “Maybe she’ll want to interview us?” Ushijima cleared his throat “hmmm.” Ah, bingo. “You should talk to her” he nudged Ushijima in the side “you’re the captain after all.” Ushijima finally broke his gaze, looking down at the water bottle in his hands “I’m not good at talking.” Tendo opened his mouth to say something encouraging; to bolster his friend who always seemed to be confident in all his abilities on the court, but the squabble between Semi and Shirabu stopped him.

“Hey” Ohira said “don’t fight in front of the press, it makes us look bad.” The two setters continued to scowl at one another but stopped bickering. “It’s no way to act in front of a girl” Tendo added, slapping a hand on his teammates backs “especially a cute girl.” His eyes trailed over to look at Wakatoshi who’s impassive face was betrayed by the way his hands mindlessly fiddled with the blue bottle in his hands. “I guess she’s cute” Semi agreed “if you like that kind of girl.” “What kind of girl is that?” Ushijima asked, making his teammates look up at him in shock. “W-well you know…” Semi struggled to come up with the words to describe her “she’s clumsy, did you see the way she almost tripped coming in here?” “Yeah, but she got up again with that super determined face” Shirabu interjected “like she was so nervous she was overcompensating.” “She seems energetic” Ohira said “and tenacious.” “Those are good traits” Wakatoshi said offhandedly. “They are” Tendo agreed, egging him on “and she has pretty, long hair. I usually like short hair on girls but even I have to admit that it’s very becoming on her. Right, Miracle Boy?” Ushijima looked up at her again, observing the waves of thick, dark hair that flowed past her shoulders. She tucked a strand behind her ear as she continued to speak to Coach Washijo and note down the things he said in her notebook. “Yes” he agreed “it is.”

Ushijima continued to think about the mystery girl as he got changed. Who was she? Tendo had said she was here on behalf of the school paper, but usually whenever they were written about, it was a sandy haired boy who came by. Why had he never seen her before? He idly put his jacket on, pondering what the feeling in his chest was. A sort of warmth and tenderness. He hoped he wasn’t getting ill.

“Before you all go” Coach Washijo said, stopping the boys from leaving the gym “remember we have practise on Saturday, and I expect you all to be there bright and early at 6am. No excuses. Also, we’ll have a member of the journalism club with us this week so watch your mouths.” He looked pointedly at Semi, who’s cheeks flushed red, much to the enjoyment of Shirabu who nudged him. Ushijima wanted to ask what her name was, but they were dismissed in the next instance and it seemed pointless.

The girl stayed on Ushijima’s mind. That evening he had several hazy dreams all involving her. In one, he just remembered her looking at him and smiling so brightly that he managed to miss a relatively easy receive. In another, she was interviewing him, and he was struggling to answer coherently. He didn’t remember the last one very well, but in it she was holding his hands. He woke up with her phantom touch still on him. He turned his head to squint at his alarm clock. It was almost five am, way too early for him to consider rising. He closed his eyes again, but sleep didn’t find him. He took his phone off charge and looked for Tendo’s number to text. He had insisted that he get a phone, but he didn’t use it much.

U: Tendo, are you awake? I have a query. 4:58am

He didn’t expect to get a response and instead went to take a cold shower to focus his mind. The cold water was a welcome distraction, and he felt his body leave the dreamy warm state it was in. Today he had practise until noon, but nothing especially pressing to do afterwards. Perhaps he’d take a jog before dinner. He knew he should probably make time to review some tapes from their last practise game too. Despite him concentrating on his own schedule, his mind once again wandered to her. What would she do today?

He left the shower, padding back to his room with a towel around his shoulders. His phone buzzed.

T: What query could you possibly have at 5am??? 5:08am T: Lay it on me, Miracle Boy 5:09am

He picked up his phone, struggling to come up with a coherent sentence.

U: The girl has remained in my mind. I think I must be getting ill, should I tell coach today? 5:12am T: Sounds like love sickness to me ;) 5:12am U: I’m not familiar with that illness 5:1am T: -_- It’s a good thing you found volleyball 5:14am U: I don’t understand 5:14am T: We’ll talk about it later 5:15am U: Ok 5:15am

“She’s here” Ushijima blinked at the girl, standing before them. She looked sleepy, clutching a thermos as she greeted the volleyball team members. Her hair was tied up into a ponytail, which Ushijima didn’t like nearly as much as her hair being out. Still, there was something admittedly quite cute about seeing her like this; dreamy eyed, red cheeked, and cosy in her fluffy jumper. She shouldn’t be out here in the cold, watching the boys do laps, she should be tucked up in bed with her hair being petted gently. The thought made Ushijima flush. He resolved to himself that he was going to concentrate on practise and not on this girl, whose name he still didn’t know.

“So, lover boy” Tendo teased, as he shrugged off his track jacket alongside his friend “you like her?” The boys had entered the gym now to do some routine stretches before doing drills, and Tendo had taken the opportunity to speak up. “I don’t know her.” “But you think she’s cute?” Ushijma paused and swallowed “yes, I suppose so.” “Don’t worry, I’ve got your back.” Tendo winked at him and Ushijima frowned. Surely, he had his back? In their current formation he tended to be behind the Guess Monster. He shook his head free of the thought and went to join the others.

“Take a twenty-minute break and then we’ll do three on three!” “Yes, coach!” The lapse in practise was a welcome one, and Ushijima wiped the sweat off his brow with his towel, grateful for the moment to breathe. “This is your chance” Tendo sang, jutting his chin out at the girl who was speaking to Semi. “It’s rude to interrupt” he said, feeling a sinking feeling in his chest as she laughed at something Semi said. What was this? He felt something brew in his chest that made his teeth clench in annoyance at his teammate. He gripped the water bottle, turning away to drink. “Don’t be angry” Tendo chided “I’ve found out her name…”

*** You stood, trying to follow the game but it was difficult to really grasp what was happening. The ball was shot back and forth with such ferocity that you worried it would hit you. How embarrassing you cringed, picturing yourself getting smacked in the face with the volleyball. You took a step back for safe measure, trying to remember what Haruki had told you.

“The piece is about emotion as much as it’s about sport.” “What kind of feelings can hitting a ball possibly inspire?” You said skeptically. Haruki smiled apologetically “I’m sorry you have to take over for me” “You didn’t ask for a family death” you said, feeling sorry “I’ll do my best.” “You’re a talented writer. Just put your own spin on it, like you always do. I promise this is the last time you’ll have to write a sports piece.”

You had to admit, that despite the dread and the unmistakable sinking feeling in your gut from being out of your depth, you were also in awe of the players. The way they were able to make split second decisions that ensured the ball’s return to the other side of the court; the constant movement… It was actually impressive.

The red-haired boy – you still didn’t know them by name – had an almost eerie gift for knowing what the opposing side was going to do. You scribbled it down, annoyed when you dropped your biro.

“Look out!” Your head tilted up to see your worst fear coming true. The ball was flying towards you and you felt like you had frozen, eyes wide like a deer in headlights. You braced yourself for impact, lowering your head again but the hit never came. You heard a scuffle near you, and you opened your eyes to see the tall one with the olive hair hit the ball away. He met your stunned eyes with his formidable ones. You’d heard of this one. Ushijima the captain of the team. Haruki had assured you that despite his daunting exterior and intimidating manner, he was nobody to legitimately fear. Unless you were on the other team that is…

He looked away first, running back to the court to be alongside his teammates without a glance back. You felt winded. Whatever had just happened felt so intense that it was strange to believe that it was only a couple of seconds long. The sound of a whistle blowing, and the shouts of the demon coach did nothing to snap you out of it.

“Are you alright?” you looked up again to see the captain looking down at you. “Um, yes” you felt your hands go clammy “thank you.” He nodded at you and a silence followed. “Is it always so…” you looked for the right word “dangerous?” The corner of his lip twitched upwards “sometimes.” “Why do you play it then?” He hesitated, looking wistful “I’m good at it and I like it.” It was a terribly blunt answer, but it made you smile. “You’re funny” you said which made him cock his head to the side. “I’ve never been described as humorous before.” “It’s a special kind of humour” you said, rewarded with a faint blush colouring his cheeks. “How is your article progressing?” He asked, clearing his throat. “I think I found my angle on it” you looked up at him “but I need to do more research. I don’t really know too much about volleyball.” “You can ask me. I know about volleyball.” You felt flustered “are you doing anything after practise? Maybe you could help me clarify all the technical stuff?” He nodded “I’m free.” “Cool.” “Yes… cool” he nodded at you, excusing himself to run back. You felt your heart race as you watched him go back to the court. For the first time since you’d been assigned the piece, you felt excited about volleyball.

#updates #fanfickittycat #sailorkittycat #haikyu #haikyuu!! #haikyu x reader #haikyuu headcanons #haikyuu hc #ushijima #ushijima wakatoshi #wakatoshi #fluff #ushijima x reader #ushijima x ofc #tendo #semi #ao3 #fanfic #fanfiction #haikyuu fanfiction